SELECTED publications

reelaviolette.

scholar. curator. artist.
founder, blackwomxnhealing

reelaviolette botts-ward is a homegirl, an artist, and a nontraditional community curator from Philadelphia, PA. Currently a doctoral candidate in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, ree curates exhibitions, courses, healing circles and research for and by Black womxn. Her dissertation research explores Black women's healing spaces in Oakland as sites of radical self making and world making. She centers everyday round the way Blackgirl methodology, using Black feminist geographies as a framework to theorize Black women’s quotidian practices of creative innovation in the wake of displacement. ree received her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College and her MA in African American Studies with an Anthropology concentration from UCLA. She has also received a certificate of Global Urban Humanities and is pursuing a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality. Her work has been supported by the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design’s Arcus Endowment Fund, the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, among others. Her first book, mourning my inner[blackgirl]child, was published with Nomadic Press in February, 2021. For more information on her work, visit blackwomxnhealing.com / @blackwomxnhealing on instagram.