Rate My Professor Joyce Boss

Dr. Joyce E. Boss is Professor of English and the Franklin I. and Irene List Saemann Chair in World Communities at Wartburg College, where she joined the faculty of the Department of English & Modern Languages in 1995. The Saemann Chair, established in 1989, supports global experiences for students. She earned an A.B. in 1982 from San Diego State University, graduating summa cum laude with a B.A. in English. Boss then pursued advanced degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving her M.A. in 1991 and Ph.D. in 1995 in Comparative Literature, with a specialization in postcolonial African literature and cinema. Before her academic career at Wartburg, she served as a secondary school instructor with the U.S. Peace Corps in Kenya.

At Wartburg College, Boss holds multiple leadership positions, including Co-Director of Multicultural and Diversity Studies, Coordinator for the Diversity Across the Curriculum program, and advisor for students in the Intercultural Studies minor. She previously directed the Study Abroad Programs from 2006 to 2018 and chaired the English & Modern Languages Department from 2010 to 2018. Her teaching encompasses world literature and cinema, myth and folklore, environmental literature, intercultural communication, and May Term travel courses to Japan and Greece. Boss's research interests lie in the intersections between folklore and sacred geographies, focusing on Japan’s traditional pilgrimage sites, as well as Godzilla and Japanese popular culture, on which she has published and presented broadly. Her dedication to faculty achievement and campus leadership has earned her Wartburg College’s Spirit of Student Life Award for Faculty Achievement in 2011 and for Campus Leadership & Service in 2015.