Faculty

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 (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) and Cities: Unauthorized Resistance and Uncertain Sovereignty in the Urban World (Routledge, 2012). He previously taught in the CUNY system and at NYU. He received his PhD in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center.

PhD, CUNY Graduate Center

MPhil, CUNY Graduate Center 

BA, Wesleyan University 

Books

Alien Aesthetics, forthcoming

The Carceral Surround, University of Minnesota Press, 2026 

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

Peer Reviewed Articles and Chapters 

- "No Future" in Routledge Handbook of Catastrophic Imaginaries, forthcoming

- "Nothing to See Here" in Security Labor, forthcoming

- "Alien Aesthesis" in media theory, under review

- “Machining Coloniality” in Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions, Ed. Liz de Freitas, University of Minnesota Press, 2026

- 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: Informatics of Domination" in Catalyst, forthcoming

- “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

Public Scholarship

- “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