Joshua A. Kruchten

Josh Kruchten is a dual-certified career educator in French and English, and an active researcher in language acquisition, writing studies, and early modern literature and culture. In his classes, he aims to help students confront the co-existing familiarity and alienness of historic artifacts; whether in classrooms, museums, or rare book rooms, he works primarily in a communicative- and culturally-responsive style. He joins Columbia having previously taught at New York University, the City University of New York, Northeastern University, and in the New York City Department of Education.

Josh is currently working on a range of book projects on sixteenth-century poetry, media history, science and culture, and educational history, as well as creative projects on the relevance of early modern artifacts today and the challenges of teaching through contemporary media shift. A three-time graduate from New York University, where he earned his PhD in 2025, Josh has previously studied at the Université de Strasbourg and the Università di Bologna as a European Union-funded Erasmus Mundus scholar, as well as at Northeastern University and the American University of Paris. He has held research positions at the Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center and Weill-Cornell Medical College. He has also been awarded funding through both Northeastern University and New York University, as well as UCLA and the British Library. As a former researcher in cell and molecular biology, his research interests are far-ranging and interdisciplinary, with a deep interest in intersection points between literature, art, philosophy, and science. His work has been published in a range of settings, from articles on RNA splicing in RNA to essays on marginal pornographic bible doodles (forthcoming) and collaborative editions of early modern insect poetry at Classiques Garnier (also forthcoming in 2027). He is also an active book reviewer both of sixteenth-century research and of popular literature.

In addition, Josh is deeply committed to social justice work at a local, national, and international level. He has volunteered as a translator, researcher, and outreach worker at the AIDS Action Committee of Boston and the MALE Center, La Federación Argentina LGBT in Buenos Aires, and Le Kiosque in Paris. He was most recently the program coordinator for an HIV/AIDS educational initiative in New York and an advocate for educational equity through curricular redesign and professional development initiatives.

He is happy to meet with prospective and current students during his office hours, which are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30-4:30, and by appointment.