La Marr Jurelle Bruce is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, critical theorist, language artist, Afromanticist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He studies and teaches black expressive culture, critical race theory, queer theory, (pop) cultural studies, and their various intersections and combinations. He earned his B.A. (with honors) in African American Studies and English from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in African American Studies and American Studies from Yale University. Dr. Bruce’s budding book project, “How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness, Blackness, and Radical Creativity,” considers a cohort of twentieth- and twenty-first-century black artists who have instrumentalized “madness” for radical self-making, art-making, and world-making. His second book will generate a history and theory of joy! as depicted and manifested in black expressive cultures since the nineteenth century. Traversing literature, theater, music, sports, religiosity, and the quotidian, this project will explore the liberatory potentials of black joy and the existential perils that threaten and exploit it. Additionally, Dr. Bruce’s work is featured in African American Review (for which he received the 2014 Joe Weixlmann Award for Best Essay in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African-American or Pan-African Literature and Culture) and forthcoming in Black Queer Studies 2.0 and TDR: The Drama Review. He has received grants and honors from the Beinecke Library at Yale University; the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia; the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale; the Mellon Foundation; the Social Science Research Council; and the Textbook and Academic Authors Association. Inducted into MMUF in 2001, he is grateful to the organization for stoking his passion for research, teaching, and scholar-activism.