Joshua Reno
Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives; Professor
Graduate School; Anthropology
Background
Joshua Reno is a socio-cultural anthropologist, and his research interests mostly concern various forms of waste and their impact on lives, economies and social movements in the contemporary U.S. He is the author of Waste Away: Working and Living with a North American Landfill (2016) and Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness (2019).
He has also contributed to the fields of critical disability studies, semiotics, STS and whiteness and critical race theory, respectively, largely based on research in the U.S. His most recent research includes projects on the political possibilities of social media, science studies, gaming and artistic practice, as well as an exploration of graphic anthropology as a method. He has co-written with others on the relationship between social justice movements, such as anarchism and feminism, and academic theory and practice.
Recent publications
- 2024 with Sabina Perrino. Pandemic Health and Fitness. New York and Oxford: Routledge.
- 2024 Home Signs: An Ethnography of Life Beyond and Beside Language. London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Education
- PhD, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
- BA, Cornell Unversity
Research Interests
- Environmental anthropology
- Semiotics and language
- Critical disability studies
- Science and technology studies
- Gaming, games and play
Teaching Interests
- History of anthropology
- Graphic anthropology
- Critical disability studies
- Anthropology of religion
- Climate change