Joshua Shannon is Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Maryland, USA. His research and teaching investigate modern and contemporary art in relationship to social and cultural history, with special interests in architecture, cities, landscape, and ecology. His publications include The Disappearance of Objects: New York Art and the Rise of the Postmodern City (Yale, 2009), The Recording Machine: Art and Fact During the Cold War (Yale, 2017) and, co-edited with Jason Weems and Laura Bieger, Humans (Terra/Chicago, 2021).