Joshua Miner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies at the University of Kansas.

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He began his work in Indigenous media theory and critical health studies, out of which grew a research program focused on the relationship between the organizational media of U.S./Canadian bureaucracy and Native/First Nations activist film, visual art, literature and interactive digital media. His recent writing has addressed Indigenous aesthetics and the settler structures of digital media technologies, appearing in Screen Bodies, The Computer Games Journal, gamevironments, Information, Communication & Society, Surveillance & Society, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and other journals.

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His current book project, Biased Render: Digital Images and Settler Culture, examines how the technical processes of image synthesis impact digital aesthetics. Miner juxtaposes hegemonic settler media forms with tactical practices across Indigenous digital art, counter-mapping, emerging cinema and game design—with a particular focus on the politics of image processing, digital modeling, rendering and interactivity as modes of algorithmic representation. Rooted in Indigenous futurist perspectives on digital media, Biased Render explores a broad range of media production that intervenes in the settler-colonial structures inherent to digital design—its platforms and aesthetics—and the interrelation of technical and cultural protocols.

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Since coming to KU, Miner has taught courses in film+media aesthetics; transmedia studies; global Indigenous film+media; tactical/activist media arts; embodied media; documentary & experimental film+media; sound design; and videogame theory+design.

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Miner is a founding member of the KU Indigenous Critical Media Lab (a partnership with the Indigenous Studies Program and Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities) and the Kansas Indigenous Arts Initiative (a partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, the Lied Center, and the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission), programs that facilitate resources for Indigenous students working in critical media arts, media studies, and digital humanities across both the KU and Haskell communities.

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PhD, University of Iowa

MA, University of North Texas

BA, University of North Texas

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