SELECTED publications

reelaviolette.
scholar. curator. artist.
founder, blackwomxnhealing
reelaviolette botts-ward, PhD, is a homegirl, an artist, and a nontraditional community curator from Philadelphia, PA. Currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the REPAIR Project at UCSF, her research explores Black women's healing spaces in Oakland as radical sites of health care and spiritual well-being. As founder of blackwomxnhealing, ree curates exhibitions, courses, healing circles and research for and by Black womxn. She remains invested in making her academic work accessible to community audiences, using art and poetry as tools of translation. Her first book, mourning my inner[blackgirl]child (Nomadic Press, 2021), uses poetics as praxis to explore embodied trauma, ancestral grief work, and spiritual healing. Her work has been featured with platforms like Elle Magazine, The Griot, and the NAACP, and supported by the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, among others. She received her PhD in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, her MA in African American studies from UCLA, and her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College. She has also taught courses in the African American Studies department at Merritt College and the University of California, Berkeley. For more on ree’s work, visit blackwomxnhealing.com / @blackwomxnhealing / @reelaviolette on instagram.
mourning my inner[blackgirl]child,
Nomadic Press, 2021
“Writing for My Mother: on Tone, Form, and the Slippages of Linguistic Refusal.”
Women, Gender and Families of Color, 2021
“Critical Sisterhood Praxis: Curating a Woman of Color Feminist Intervention for
Spiritual Reclamation in the Academy” with Aa Reynolds and Farima Pour-Khorshid,
The Journal of Educational Foundations, 2021
“sanctified children: on the emergence of blackgirl spirit form +
the discovery of inner wisdom.”
Arts Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. 2021.
“Healing at Home: on Self Making and Black Girl Interiors.”
ASAP/J, 2021.
University of California, Berkeley. 2019.
selected panels + presentations
selected panels + presentations
The UCSF REPAIR Postdoctoral Fellows
University of California, San Francisco, 2022
Black Futures Month, Keynote Speaker
University of California, Davis, 2022
Museum of the African Diaspora
ft. reelaviolette botts-ward, 2022
Black Girlhood, Our Mothers, + Home
Jasmine Mans + reelaviolette botts-ward,
blackwomxnhealing, 2021
Black Girls, Black Voices, Black History
reelaviolette botts-ward, Zachary McRae, and Rasheed Shabazz
BAMPFA, University of California, Berkeley, 2021
Black Feminist Geographies
Savannah Shange + Brandi Summers,
Moderated by Tianna Paschel + reelaviolette botts-ward
University of California, Berkeley, 2021
Poetry and the Senses Spring 2021 Fellows
Spring 2021 Fellows, featuring + reelaviolette botts-ward
Arts Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 2021
Poetry Reading with Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Natalie Diaz, and Aja Monet
Moderated by Ken Ueno + reelaviolette botts-ward
Arts Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. 2021
Tongo Eisen-Martin, reelaviolette botts-ward,
Tyson Amir, Azariah Cole-Shephard, Joy Elan
Alameda County Public Library, 2021