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With a heart for people who love to learn, Dr. Joshua D. Smith has taken the best of his professional and ministry training to teach people in ways that help them grow personally and spiritually.  He presents on specialized topics and adapts them for young and old audiences alike in ways that make learning fun, engaging and transformative. Dr. Smith has over 20 years of combined experience as a professor, high school certificate instructor, motivational speaker, special topics presenter and minister. 

 

Joshua grew up in a Christian family, but began to take Jesus seriously at the age of 15 when he participated in a 3-month missionary trip to Europe. From that time, he began preaching regularly. As a saxophone player, literary scholar and classics teacher, he uses music, storytelling and oratorical skills to help others learn and grow in new and exciting ways.

 

Though Joshua is an ordained minister with a wide array of experience in church service over the last two decades, his professional background is in English literature. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in American Literature and Culture. He received both his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of Southern California.  As a literary and American studies scholar, his primary research centers on nineteenth-century American thought and the conceptual influence of the American West. His research has forged links between such disparate subjects as Nat Turner, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Ellison, Quentin Tarantino and Toni Morrison. 

 

Currently, he is a professor in the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. Joshua and his wife, Marsee, have two boys, Josué and Angelo.

 

 

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