La Marr Jurelle Bruce

La Marr Jurelle Bruce is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, critical theorist, Afromantic, and Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. At UMD, he writes and teaches about black expressive culture, popular culture, protest art, queer theory, psychoanalysis, and their myriad convergences.
 
Dr. Bruce earned his B.A. in African American Studies and English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University and his Ph.D. in African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He has received research support from the Beinecke Library at Yale University; the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia; the Ford Foundation; the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale; the Graduate School at the University of Maryland; the Mellon Foundation; the Social Science Research Council; and the Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement at Duke University.
 
Winner of the 2014 Joe Weixlmann Award from African American Review, Dr. Bruce has work featured or forthcoming in American Quarterly; No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies (Duke University Press, 2016); Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies; and TDR: The Drama Review. His book project in progress, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness, Blackness, and Radical Creativity, is a study of black artists who mobilize “madness” in radical literature and performance.