Joyce Oldham Appleby was an American historian. She was a professor of history at UCLA, and president of the Organization of American Historians (1991) and the American Historical Association (1997). Appleby was a specialist in historiography and the political thought of the early American Republic, with special interests in Republicanism, liberalism and the history of ideas about capitalism. She served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals and editorial projects, and received prominent national fellowships.