Bryan Reynolds (scholar)

Becoming Criminal shows how the dissident activities and idiosyncratic languages of gypsies, rogues, vagabonds, and cutpurses interacted with normative society and culture. Reynolds argues that the real and imaginary "criminal culture" on the streets and in popular minds has been overlooked or misunderstood by scholars. He traces the effect of criminal culture to its emergence in the 16th century, when this community related daily with dominant aspects of English ideology and culture and modeled its own cultural characteristics in response to the conventions of the time. According to Reynolds, their behavior and thought is most evident in the period's commercial literature, such as in pamphlet literature and the works of Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and Brome, and in its material and symbolic relationships to the public theatre.

Born in New York City to Donna Reynolds, a VP of marketing at General Foods, and Donald Reynolds, a VC, Reynolds’ family moved from the Upper East Side to the Westchester County suburb of Scarsdale when he was a toddler. He attended Heathcote Elementary School, where he played soccer for the famed Heathcote Hornets through 8th grade, which was coached by New York Cosmos first general manager Clive Toye. He was also an avid skate boarder, BMXer, and skier, which informs his research on action sports. Not an enthusiastic student, Reynolds was encouraged to leave Scarsdale High School for the more disciplinary Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. Reynolds returned to Scarsdale for his junior and senior years, where he joined a special program, called CORE, for students who had difficulties making it to class. Reynolds graduated in 1983 with a D average. His pursuit of a career racing motorcycle motocross brought him out to San Diego in 1985, where he attended Grossmont Community College. From there, he attended the University of California, Berkeley for his BA, and then Harvard University for his MA and PhD.

Bryan Reynolds (born 1965), Claire Trevor Professor and Chancellor's Professor at the University of California-Irvine, is an American critical theorist, performance theorist, and Shakespeare scholar who developed the combined sociopolitical theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as transversal poetics. He is also a playwright, director, performer, and cofounder of the Transversal Theater Company, an Amsterdam-based collective of American and European artists, which has produced a number of his works. Reynolds received his bachelor's degree in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and his master's and doctoral degrees in English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. He has been a Professor of Drama at the University of California, Irvine since 1998. He has held visiting professorships at the University of London-Drama, the University of Amsterdam-Theater Studies, Utrecht University-Theater Studies, University of Cologne-American Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main-American Studies, University College Utrecht-Arts and Humanities, the University of California, San Diego-Theatre, Literature, Cognitive Science, the American University of Beirut-English, University of Tsukuba-Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Nairobi-Department of Literature, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt-Communications, University of Lorraine-Arts, Sciences, & Business Management, INSEEC Business School (L'Institut des hautes études économiques et commerciales)-Marketing, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon; and he has taught at Deleuze Camp at Schloss Wahn, University of Cologne, Germany, and the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, Poland, among other academic and performing arts institutions. Reynolds is also a regular contributor to Freeskier Magazine, where he publishes articles derived from his ongoing research on extreme sports.