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 praised as a “lyrical and profound tour de force” (Patricia J. Williams); “innovative, evocative, and beautifully written” (Nicole R. Fleetwood); and “devastating” (Dawn Lundy Martin). Bruce is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, cultural and literary theorist, first-generation college graduate, Afromanticist, and Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. His scholarship explores and activates black expressive cultures—spanning literature, film, music, theatre, and the art and aesthetics of quotidian black life. Winner of the 2014 Joe Weixlmann Essay Prize from African American Review, Bruce has work featured or forthcoming in 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.