Rev. Joanne M. Braxton, PhD, M.Div.

(she/hers), CEO and President of the Board of the Braxton Institute

Joanne Braxton is an ordained minister with full ministerial standing in the Eastern Virginia Association of the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ. She is also Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Professor Emeritus at William & Mary and Adjunct Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS). A graduate of the doctoral program in American Studies at Yale, the M.Div. program at Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, the M.T.S. program at Pacific School of Religion, and Sarah Lawrence College, Braxton is poet and a scholar whose books include Black Female Sexualities (2015), Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory (2003), Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook (1993), The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1993), Wild Women in the Whirlwind: The Renaissance in Contemporary Afra-American Writing (1990), Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition (1989) and Sometimes I Think of Maryland (1977), a collection of poetry. She has also written online curriculum in spiritual practices for Pilgrim Press of the United Church of Christ.

At W&M Dr. Braxton founded and directed the W&M Middle Passage Project and was instrumental in the formation of the programs in American Studies, Women’s Studies and especially Africana Studies. She taught writing, courses about the Middle Passage, about Black women writers and African American community issues while also serving as United Church of Christ campus minister. She was PI for the W&M-EVMS Narrative Medicine for Excellence Project. More recently, Braxton spent a year as David B. Larson Fellow in Spirituality and Health at the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center with her project “Tree of Life: Spirituality and Health in the African American Experience.” She has been a Wellness Consultant to the National Institutes of Health Office of Internal Training and Education and served as a pastoral and spiritual caregiver in clinical, congregational and movement settings. Dr. Braxton is a member of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, the Association of American Medical Colleges Fundamental Role of the Arts and Humanities in Medical Education (FRAHME) Initiative and a Fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics. She curates and moderates the Braxton Institute Community Dialogues on Resisting and Thriving and facilitates workshops and trainings in contemplative practice, reflective writing and the cultivation of moral resiliency. Dr. Braxton received the “Recognition of a Warrior” from the Weyanoke Association for Red-Black History and Culture, where she is known as Mama Sage, as she is also known in healing circles.