Writing + Editing
I’ve written extensively about my research and scholarship, both on my own and collaboratively with others. I’ve edited others’ work too. Keep reading for links to my published work and writing I have curated and developed as an editor.
Peer-Reviewed & Scholarly Research Publications
Singapore, Southeast Asia
2025 | The Polyglot: Plurilingual Wonders, “Mother Tongue” Hegemony, and Totalizing Images in and of Singapore. Journal article. In American Anthropologist.
2023 | Seeing (or Perceiving) Difference in Multiracial Singapore: Habits of Looking in a Raciolinguistic Image Economy. Journal article. In American Anthropologist 125 (4).
2023 | (De)coupling Positional Whiteness and White Identities through ‘Good English’ in Singapore. Journal article. In Signs & Society 11(1).
2022 | Southeast Asian Island City-State, Singapore: Multi-scalar Spatial Fictions and the Hinterland Within. Book chapter (PDF). In New Directions in Linguistic Geography: Exploring Articulations of Space, edited by Greg Niedt (Palgrave).
2022 | Singapore, City of the Future: Promotional Genres and Visual-Aesthetic Registers of Allochronic Futurity. Journal article. MediaTropes 8 (2).
2022 | Postracial Policing, ‘Mother Tongue’ Sourcing, and Images of Singlish Standard. Journal article. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32 (2).
2021 | Destination Storytelling Singapore: Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and the Constructed Global Audience (with Kenzell Huggins). Journal article. Southeast Asian Media Studies 3 (3).
Singapore, Michigan
2025 | A Ghost Town Called Singapore: The Politics of Geographic Storytelling, From the “Wild Heart of Saugatuck” to “Singapore Dunes, LLC” (with Thomas Grant). Journal article. Society and Space 43 (3).
Democratic Participation in the U.S.
2025 | Semiotic Determinacy: Sovereign Citizens’ Approach to Legal Language (with Amy Cohen and Ilana Gershon). Journal article. Signs & Society 13 (1).
2025 | How Does the State Ignore? Ideologies and Practices of Substantive and Procedural Listening in U.S. School Board Meetings (with Ilana Gershon). Journal article. Language & Communication 100.
History of the Social Sciences
2021 | “Legacies and Remnants of the Chicago School: Lineage-Making and Interdisciplinary Urban Research at the University of Chicago” (with Pranathi Diwakar). Book chapter (PDF). In Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Urban and Regional Studies, edited by Anthony M. Orum, Javier Ruiz-Tagle, and Serena Vicari Haddock (Wiley-Blackwell).
Scene from the final act of the 2019 Singapore Bicentennial Experience at Fort Canning, featuring 360º LED screens and rain shower effects (photo by me)
Guest Editing
2025 | “Mother Tongue” as Global Politics. American Anthropologist, co-edited with Jessica Sujata Chandras (University of North Florida).
Jessica Sujata Chandras and Joshua Babcock | Introduction: Mother Tongue as Global Politics
Kristina Nielsen | Mother Tongue Influence and Global English: Creating “Neutral” Elites in Delhi's Business Processing Outsourcing Industry
Timothy Y. Loh | Sign Language as “Mother Tongue Orphan”: A Challenge to Raciolinguistic Multiculturalism in Singapore
Arnaaz Khwaja | This Language Is Mine: US College Students Navigating Contradictions of “Mother Tongue” and Heritage Language
Joshua Babcock | The Polyglot: Plurilingual Wonders, “Mother Tongue” Hegemony, and Totalizing Images in and of Singapore
Jessica Sujata Chandras, Devayani Tirthali, and Sameer Honwad | (M)other Tongue Aspirations: Negotiating Banjara Language, Identity, and Education Policy in Rural India
Paola Tiné | “See, Your Grandma Has Two Mother Tongues…or Only One?”: Shame, Dialect, and Shifting Mother Tongues in Sicily
2023 | Linguistic Anthropology in the Wake of Coloniality: Toward a Non-binary Semiotics of Intersectionality. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, co-edited with Jay Ke-Schutte (Zhejiang University).
Jay Ke-Schutte, and Joshua Babcock | Introduction: Toward a Non-binary Semiotics of Intersectionality: Linguistic Anthropology in the Wake of Coloniality
Andrew M. Carruthers | Specters of Excess: Passing and Policing in the Malay-speaking Archipelago
Jessica Chandras | (Out)Caste Language Ideologies: Intersectional Raciolinguistic Stigma and Assimilation from Denotified Tribal Students’ Perspectives in Rural India
Katy Highet | “RIP English”: Race, Class and ‘Good English’ in India
Velda Khoo | Voicing Singlish from the “Middle”: Indexical Hybridities of Class, Race, Language, and Singaporeanness
2023 | Beyond the Colonial Vortex of the ‘West’: Subverting Non-Western Imperialisms Before and After 24 February 2022. South/South Movement Dialogues (collective authorship and editing).
2023 | Toward a ‘Both/And’ Semiotics of Intersectionality: Raciolinguistics Beyond White Settler Situations. Signs & Society 11(1), co-edited with Jay Ke-Schutte (Zhejiang University).
Joshua Babcock and Jay Ke-Schutte | Introduction: Toward a “Both-And” Semiotics of Intersectionality: Raciolinguistics beyond White Settler-Colonial Situations
Joshua Babcock | (De)coupling Positional Whiteness and White Identities through “Good English” in Singapore
Vincent Pak and Mie Hiramoto | Sticky Raciolinguistics
Joyhanna Yoo | A Raciosemiotics of Appropriation: Transnational Performance of Raciogender among Mexican K-Pop Fans
Jacob Henry | “Say a Sentence”: Drawing an Interactional Link between Organizations, Language Ideologies, and Coloniality
Installation view, cybercrime room, part of the special exhibit / escape room experience “Will You Do You?” at the Singapore Discovery Centre (photo by me)
Op-eds, Blogs, Public Writing & Participatory Works
2024 | The Real Lessons From the Michigan Ghost Town Called Singapore. Op-ed. The Diplomat (August 28, 2024).
2023 | Beyond Babel: Insurgent Multilingualism and Decolonizing Public Space. An activation, language sharing, and screening event designed to reclaim public space for non-English languages. A collective performance alongside Seat or Stand and Speak (2021) by Carrie Mae Weems.
Co-organized with Joe Dupris (Native American and Indigenous Studies, Brown University), Foroogh Farhang (The Watson Institute, Brown University), Meg Harvey (Native American and Indigenous Studies, Brown University), and Jordi Rivera Prince (Department of Anthropology, Brown University).
2022–2023 | Decolonial Pedagogies. An open-source, youth-generated resource to support decolonial learning as a practice of liberation. Public website developed with students in The College at the University of Chicago.
January 2022 | Technologies of Language, Race, and State: An Intersectional Archive. Collaborative public website developed with Andrew Crane (University College London), Ayomide Badmus, Astrid Braun, Jon Hoerner, Teddy Sandler, Marya Tawam, and Sofia Torriente (The College at the University of Chicago).
2021 | Whiteness and Pedagogies of Language. Online article. Anthropology News.
December 2021 | Banal Insurgencies: Maps, Plans and Footpaths. Book chapter. In Can, Cannot and Other Options: Between Defiance and Desire, Toward Fuller Lives, edited by Wayne W. J. Lim and Soh Kay Min. A Weekend Affair, Singapore.
2020 | Fieldwork in a Time of Coronavirus. anthro{dendum} blog.
1 May 2020 | Joshua Babcock | Introduction: Fieldwork in a Time of Coronavirus
8 May 2020 | Joshua Babcock | The Nation Under Threat: Rethinking Critique, Recentering Relationships
15 May 2020 | Rachel Howard | No Longer a Field
22 May 2020 | CD Green | Connecting through the Layered Traumas of Fieldwork
29 May 2020 | Hanna Pickwell | Pandemic Productivity
5 June 2020 | Pranathi Diwakar | Disaster, Dystopia, and Disphony
12 June 2020 | Yukun Zeng | Home, Work, Homework, and Fieldwork
19 June 2020 | Joelle Powe, Thea McRae, Christina Jones, and Laith A. Ayogu | (E)thnographic Correspondence and Collaborative Improvisation
2020 | Memes, Migrants, and the Epidemiological Imagination. Blog. UCL Medical Anthropology “Consciously Quarantined” series.
2020 | Poetry over Panic in Singapore. Online article. Anthropology News.
2020 | “Code-Switching” and Standardizing Singlish. Blog. Society for Linguistic Anthropology Blog.
2020 | Love Letter: The New Normal (with Wayne W. J. Lim and Soh Kay Min). Instagram essay and curated readings. A Weekend Monthly social newsletter series.
2018 | Coordinating Contestations: Publics, Spaces, Interactions. In Contested Spaces: A Field Guide, Vol. II. Edited by 2016–17 Field Trip / Field Notes / Field Guide Graduate Consortium Fellows. The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Teller’s cage from the former wildcat Bank of Singapore, Michigan. Previously located roughly 4 km (2.5 mi) to the north, the bank building was moved to 317 Butler Street in Saugatuck, MI, in the late 19th century. The former bank currently houses an art gallery; the gallery’s cashier sits inside the former bank’s cage. (Photo by me)
Commentary, Criticism & Reviews
2025 | “Life Ain't Gonna Be Like You Always Wanted”: Mixed media animation (charcoal, dirt, indigo dyed cotton, molasses, sugar, and watercolor on paper) by Rebecca Louise Carter, 2024. Critique. Visual Anthropology Review.
2024 | DecolonialPedagogies.Space: Youth-led, Open-source Learning Design as Experiential Learning and Meta-pedagogical Empowerment. Commentary. Teaching and Learning Anthropology 6 (2).
2023 | Brown is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore by Kristian-Marc James Paul, Mysara Aljaru, and Myle Yan Tay, eds. Book review. Wasafiri 116: Shorelines—South East Asia and the Littoral.