La Marr Jurelle Bruce

La Marr Jurelle Bruce is author of How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity (Duke University Press). The book has earned praise as a “lyrical and profound tour de force” (Patricia J. Williams); “innovative, evocative, and beautifully written” (Nicole R. Fleetwood); “devastating” (Dawn Lundy Martin); and "a paradigm-shaping book for future scholarship around mental difference" (Journal of Medical Humanities). How to Go Mad was awarded the 2022 Prize for a First Book from the Modern Language Association, the world's largest scholarly humanities association. Bruce is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, cultural and literary theorist, first-generation college graduate, and Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. His scholarship centers black expressive cultures—spanning literature, film, music, theatre, and the art and aesthetics of quotidian black life. Winner of the 2014 Joe Weixlmann Award for Best Essay, Bruce has work featured or forthcoming in African American Review, American Quarterly, The Black Scholar, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, TDR: The Drama Review, Social Text, and The Mad Studies Reader (forthcoming from Routledge Press). His work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among other organizations. He earned his B.A. in African American Studies and English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in African American Studies and American Studies from Yale University. Bruce is a native of the Bronx, New York.