• Faculty

  • Josh Scannell

    Assistant Professor of Media Studies

    Email
    scannellrj@newschool.edu

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    Josh Scannell

    Profile

    R. Joshua Scannell is assistant professor of Media Studies at The New School. His concentration is in digital media theory. He researches how ubiquitous computational media organizes sensoria and governance in the 21st century. He is the author of The Carceral Surround (forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press) and Cities: Unauthorized Resistance and Uncertain Sovereignty in the Urban World. He previously taught in the CUNY system and at NYU. He received his PhD in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center.


    Degrees Held

    PhD, CUNY Graduate Center

    MPhil, CUNY Graduate Center 

    BA, Wesleyan University 


    Recent Publications

    Publications

     

    Monographs

    The Carceral Surround (University of Minnesota Press, Forthcoming)

    Cities: Resistances and Uncertain Sovereignty in the Urban World. Routledge, 2012

     

    Peer Reviewed Articles and Chapters 

    “Machining Coloniality” in Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions, Ed. Liz de Freitas, University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming

    - Pete Ikeler and R. Joshua Scannell, “Nostalgic Resignation: Working-Class Characters in Neoliberal Film.” Sociological Forum, 2023

    - Erin Siodmak and R. Joshua Scannell “What’s Blood Got to Do With It? A Culture of Cinema Horrors at the Precipice of an Abyss.” Teaching Sociology, 2022

    - “Terra Ignota: Noncorrelational and Computational Agency” in My Computer Was a Computer – Catalyst: M. Beatrice Fazi. Ed. David Cecchetto. Noxious Sector Press, 2022

    - “Policing Plague and Rebellion in the Carceral Surround” in Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research Volume 10: Pandemic Justice, editors Steven Kohm, Kevin Walby, Kelly Gorkoff, Katharina Maier and Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land, Centre for Interdisciplinary Justice Studies (CIJS), The University of Winnipeg, Spring 2021

    - “Policing the Future” in Digital Lives in the Global City, Deb Cowen, Brett Story, Alexis Mitchell, Emily Paradis eds., University of British Columbia Press, 2020 

    -  “This is Not Minority Report.” in Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, Ruha Benjamin ed., Duke, 2019 

    - “Both a Cyborg and a Goddess: Deep Managerial Time and Informatic Governance” in Object Oriented Feminism. Katherine Behar, ed. University of Minnesota Press, 2016

    - Patricia Clough with Karen Gregory, Benjamin Haber, R. Joshua Scannell, “The Datalogical Turn” in Non-Representational Methodologies: Re-envisioning Research. Philip Vannini, ed. Routledge, 2015
     

    Book Reviews

    - “Review: Ramon Amaro’s The Black Technical Object and Seb Franklin’s The Digitally Disposed” in American Literature Vol 95(1), 2023

    - “Cops Are the Crisis and Cameras Are No Solution” in Contemporary Sociology. 2021;50(4):278-281, 2022

    - “Architectures of Managerial Triumphalism (Review of Benjamin Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty” in Boundary 2, Nov. 7, 2018

    - “How We Think About Technology (Without Thinking About Politics): N. Katherine Hayles’ How We Think” in Boundary 2, Nov. 4, 2015
     

    Non-Peer Reviewed Publications

    - “Controlled Measures,” Real Life Magazine, September 17, 2018

    - “Broken Windows, Broken Code,” Real Life Magazine, August 29, 2016

    - Josh Scannell, “What Can an Algorithm Do?,” DIS Magazine, February 2015


    Research Interests

    Media Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Critical Digital and Algorithm Studies, Carceral Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies and Critical Theory, Feminist and Queer Theory, Body and Embodiment Studies, Film Studies


    Future Courses

    Carceral Media
    NMDS 5439, Spring 2026

    Control
    NMDS 5454, Fall 2025

    Media Theory
    NMDS 5006, Fall 2025

    Methods for Media Studies
    NMDS 5641, Spring 2026

    Theorizing Digital Media
    NMDS 5145, Fall 2025

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