Education

Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2016

M.A., Pennsylvania State University, 2012

B.A., University of South Carolina, 2010

Bio

Joshua DiCaglio is an Assistant Professor of English who studies rhetoric, science, and mysticism as intersecting modes of discourse attempting to make sense of our modernized, globalized world. His first book, Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry, was released in November 2021 with the University of Minnesota Press. He also writes and teaches about ecocriticism and environmental rhetoric, science and technology studies (STS), science fiction, technical writing, critical theory, history of rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and Advaitan and Buddhist philosophies of language.

Research Interests

Dr. DiCaglio’s Scholars@TAMU Profile

• Rhetoric of Science
• Environmental
• Communication
• History and Theory of Rhetoric
• The Relationship between Science and Mysticism

Honors and Awards

• Schachterle Prize conferred by Society for Literature, Science and the Arts – The best new essay on literature and science written in English by a nontenured scholar. 2020
• Montague Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Scholar conferred by Texas A&M University – (College Station, Texas, United States) – University-wide teaching award 2019

Publications

“Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry”, Published by University of Minnesota Press (2021).

How is it possible that you are—simultaneously—cells, atoms, a body, quarks, a component in an ecological network, a moment in the thermodynamic dispersal of the sun, and an element in the gravitational whirl of galaxies? In this way, we routinely transform reality into things already outside direct human experience, things we hardly comprehend even as we speak of DNA, climate effects, toxic molecules, and viruses. How do we find ourselves with these disorienting layers of scale? Enter Scale Theory, which provides a foundational theory of scale that explains how scale works, the parameters of scalar thinking, and how scale refigures reality—that teaches us how to think in terms of scale, no matter where our interests may lie.

Other Publications

• DiCaglio, J. (2021). Simulations of Moksha: Liberation, Mysticism, and Transhumanism in Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis. Science Fiction Studies. 48(2), 279-305.
• DiCaglio, J. (2020). Scale Tricks and God Tricks, or The Power of Scale in Powers of Ten. Configurations. 28(4), 459-490.
• DiCaglio, J., Barlow, K. M., & Johnson, J. S. (2018). Rhetorical Recommendations Built on Ecological Experience: A Reassessment of the Challenge of Environmental Communication. Environmental Communication. 12(4), 438-450.
• DiCaglio, J. (2017). Language and the Logic of Subjectivity: Whitehead and Burke in Crisis. Philosophy and Rhetoric. 50(1), 96-118.

• DiCaglio, J. (2015). Ironic Ecology. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 22(3), 447-465.