Joy R. Bostic, PhD (she/her) is an associate professor in Religious and Africana Studies. She is also an associate dean, a university marshal, a novice djembe player, ordained minister, world traveler, and auntie to six nieces and six nephews. As a Co-Principal Investigator for the Humanities in Learning Leadership Series (HILLS) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she uses Afrofuturism and speculative literature to generate humanist strategies for community building, organizational change, and social justice.

Bostic is a member of the steering committee for the Mysticism Unit of the American Academy of Religion, the international Mystical Theology Network, and the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (TRRR). She has authored several book chapters and scholarly articles on race, gender, and religion and is the author of African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and co-editor of TRRR’s volume Black Religious Landscaping in Africa and the United States (Peter Lang, 2021).