Joshua Glenn
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Joshua Glenn (born October 6, 1967) is an American writer, editor, and semiotics analyst. He is the cofounder of the websites HiLobrow, Significant Objects, and Semionaut. In the 1990s he published the zine ''Hermenaut''.


Early life and education

Glenn was born and raised in Boston's
Jamaica Plain Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood of in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Settled by Puritans seeking farmland to the south, it was originally part of the former Town of Roxbury, now also a part of the City of Boston. The commun ...
neighborhood. He attended Boston Latin School and
Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...
. He earned a Master's in Teaching from
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
in 1993. He is married and has two sons.


''Hermenaut''

From 1992 through 2001 Glenn was publisher and coeditor of ''Hermenaut'', a philosophy and cultural criticism periodical, described as "a zine that gives voice to indie intellectual thought... a scholarly journal minus the university, a sounding board for thinking folk who operate outside the ivory tower". Glenn wrote a feature in each issue on a single "hermenaut" (or "outsider intellectual") including
Theodor W. Adorno Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
, Philip K. Dick, Bruce Lee, Oscar Wilde, Abbie Hoffman, and
Simone Weil Simone Adolphine Weil ( , ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. Over 2,500 scholarly works have been published about her, including close analyses and readings of her work, since 1995. ...
. From 2000 to 2001, Glenn published and coedited the online journal Hermenaut.com and hosted its online salon, the Wicked Pavilion. His zine collection, including a full run of ''Hermenaut'', is held by the University of Iowa libraries.


Online community projects

From 1994 through 1996, Glenn was an editor at the ''
Utne Reader ''Utne Reader'' (also known as ''Utne'') ( ) is a digital digest that collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment, generally from alternative media sources including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music, and ...
''. During that time, he served as a judge for the Independent Press Awards. He hosted online salons for ''Utne Reader'', and contributed a chapter to the book ''Salons: The Joy of Conversation''. Glenn was editorial director of the start-up Web business Tripod.com from 1996 through 1998. The company provided user-friendly tools for online publishing, aggregated communities of interest, and published "streetsmart strategies for work, life, and everything else." When the TV newsmagazine ''Nightline'' did an episode on Tripod, Glenn pranked the show's producers by making up digital newspeak "Let's get FTP connectivity hyped up to the hilt. Let's get the synergies ramping with the daily rocket." When Tripod was acquired by
Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Walth ...
in 2000, Glenn left to publish ''Hermenaut'' full-time. Glenn worked at the ''
Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
''s weekly Ideas section as an associate editor and columnist. From 2006 through 2008, Glenn wrote the Brainiac blog for the ''Boston Globe''s Ideas section. On January 31, 2007, he scooped the ''Globe''s coverage of the Mooninite attack on Boston. Glenn was also a contributing editor to the website '' Feed'' and wrote for
The Baffler ''The Baffler'' is an American magazine of cultural, political, and business analysis. Established in 1988 by editors Thomas Frank and Keith White, it was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, until 2010, when it moved to Cambridge, Massachuse ...
, '' The Idler'' and n+1.


Semiotic explorations

In 2007, Glenn coedited ''Taking Things Seriously'', a collection of 75 photos of and essays about objects of "unexpected significance", which made ''
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cu ...
''s "Must List" in October 2007. Glenn has referred to the book as "a long-delayed issue of ''Hermenaut''." In 2008, Glenn wrote ''The Idler's Glossary''. Glenn and bookfuturist Matthew Battles launched the intellectual-cultural blog HiLobrow, named by ''
TIME magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Ma ...
'' one of the Best Blogs of 2010. Glenn's ongoing research at HiLobrow includes a scheme to "reperiodize America's generations", as well as an analysis of science fiction published from 1904-1933 — an era Glenn has named science fiction's "Radium Age." Glenn has also written for the ''
Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...
'', the '' New York Times Book Review'', Slate, Cabinet, and the science-fiction blog ''
io9 ''io9'' is part of Gizmodo media since 2015, and it began as blog launched in 2008 by Gawker Media. The site initially focused on the subjects of science fiction, fantasy, futurism, science, technology and related areas but over the years has ...
''. In July 2009, Glenn and Rob Walker launched the Significant Objects project, whose goal was to test the hypothesis "Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given object's subjective value can actually be measured objectively." Glenn and Walker bought objects at thrift stores and yard sales, recruited one hundred authors — including Jonathan Lethem,
Lydia Millet Lydia Millet (born December 5, 1968) is an American novelist. Her 2020 novel '' A Children's Bible'', was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and named one of the ten best books of the year by the ''New York Times Book Review''. S ...
,
Nicholson Baker Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is an American novelist and essayist. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. His early novels such as ''The Mezzanine'' and ''Room Temperature'' we ...
,
Colson Whitehead Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of eight novels, including his 1999 debut work '' The Intuitionist''; '' The Underground Railroad'' (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Awar ...
, and
William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, hi ...
— to write stories about those objects, then sold the objects on eBay, using the stories as item descriptions. ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''s Aditya Chakrabortty called the project "one of the most life-affirmingly cheeky studies I have seen for ages." The project resulted in $128.74 worth of objects being sold for $3,612.51. Two subsequent volumes of Significant Objects stories raised funds for the tutoring programs
826 National 826 National is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping students, ages 6–18, improve their expository and creative writing skills at eight locations across the United States. The chapters include 826 Valencia in San Francisco, 826NYC ...
and Girls Write Now.
Fantagraphics Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint. History Founding Fantagraphics was founde ...
published a collection of Significant Objects stories in 2011. In 2022, Hat & Beard Press announced a forthcoming book ''Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter'' by Glenn and Walker. Glenn and Malcolm Evans, a British semiotician, launched Semionaut in 2010, an international website about semiotic cultural and brand analysis, with contributors from Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and Saudi Arabia. In 2011, Glenn and Mark Kingwell published ''The Wage Slave's Glossary'', which "looks at the language we use to make sense of the interconnected world of work and leisure." In 2021, McGill-Queen’s University Press published a third book in the series, ''The Adventurer’s Glossary'' written by Glenn and Mark Kingwell, with illustrations by Seth.


''UNBORED''

In 2012, Bloomsbury published Joshua Glenn and Elizabeth Foy Larsen's family activities guide ''UNBORED: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun''. "Fighting the war against techno-passivity, it reads like an old-fashioned child's activity book for a modern Gen-X parented family." It was followed up with their family activities guide ''UNBORED Games: Serious Fun for Everyone'' in 2014 and ''UNBORED ADVENTURE'' in 2015. The project spun off several activity kits including the ''UNBORED: Time Capsule'' which received Dr Toy's 100 Best award.


Radium Age SF

Glenn describes the Radium Age as "a sort of proto-science fiction... a genre that was still getting its feet and finding its way in the dark that didn't quite have solidified boundaries that would later define ''science fiction''." In 2012 Glenn and Hilobrow co-editor Matthew Battles printed a series of public domain Radium Age titles beginning in 2012 on their own imprint HiLo Books. These included works by authors not normally thought to be science fiction authors-- Jack London's ''The Scarlet Plague'' and Rudyard Kipling's ''With the Night Mail.'' In 2022 MIT Press invited Glenn to edit a new series exploring the Radium Age and its significance, bringing ten other titles from the Radium Age back into print. The initial run includes lesser-known novels by Arthur Conan Doyle and
H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''