Joshua Rubin
Title
Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department
Anthropology
Information
- [email protected]
- Diamond 302
Address
Mayflower Hill Waterville, Maine 04901-8853
Current Courses
| Title | Course Number(s) | Section(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Cultural Anthropology | AY112 | B |
| Art, Power, and Politics | AY325 | A |
| Critical Perspectives on Sports and Societies | AY267, AA267 | A, A |
| Pixelated Parts: Race, Gender, Video Games | AY298 | A |
| Media Worlds: Anthropological Approaches to Media and Mediation | AY398 | A |
| Honors in Anthropology | AY483, AY484 | C, F |
Education
University of Michigan, B.A.
Yale University, Ph.D.
Areas of Expertise
- Art, aesthetics, and media
- Sensory perception
- Sport
- Video games and other virtual worlds
Research Interests and Biography
Rubin is an anthropologist of media, broadly defined, and his research examines the webs of cultural and political significance that inform what media evokes in its perceivers. To date, his work has focused on rugby as a form of embodied performance in South Africa, video game development, and art. His first book, Animated by Uncertainty: Rugby and the Performance of History in South Africa (University of Michigan Press, 2021), examines how rugby became a became a terrain for colonization–both by the colonial state and by the militant white masculinity of apartheid-and how anti-apartheid activists and the post-apartheid state attempted to contest this colonization and advance alternative political projects. In this framing, rugby is not a symbolic representation of struggles happening elsewhere. Rather, it is an evocative performance that, in the actions of its participants, calls this political history into view. Rubin’s second book project further extends this interest in media and evocation. This project, Feeding the Loop, is an ethnography of the roles that user research plays in shaping the evocative significances of video games. It is also under contract with University of Michigan Press.
In addition to these major projects, he has also published on art in Zimbabwe and the absurd violence of the apartheid state. His work has appeared in the journals SAFUNDI, Cultural Anthropology, Africa, Anthropology Southern Africa, and The Information Society. A book chapter on the politics of the NFL Rulebook was released in the edited volume Not Playing Around: Intersectional Identities, Media Representation, and the Power of Sport(2022).
Building on these past publications, Rubin is presently working on two new book projects. The first, with Routledge, is volume that puts his analysis of video games into conversation with the perspectives of seven professional user researchers. This book will explore the conceptual space between academic research and its industry counterparts. The second is a monograph that investigates “dangerous evocations.” Engaging with literatures on images, iconoclasm, and art in anthropology and art history, it argues that evocative significances of “dangerous” media demonstrate with special clarity the cultural logics of imagery and sense perception. The first piece of this new project is forthcoming in 2026 with American Anthropologist.
He is also working concurrently on an archival project, entitled “Anthropology’s Lost Library,” that seeks to preserve unfinished and unpublished writings in the discipline of anthropology. For those wishing to learn more, an essay about the motivations behind the Lost Library project was published with Anthropology News in 2026. That essay can be found here.
Prior to arriving at Colby in 2025, he taught for ten years at Bates College. While at Bates, he won the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.