top of page

SELECTED publications

(1) HEADSHOT _edited.jpg

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. 

selected publications

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.

Misuse of the Sacred.

University of California, Berkeley. 2019.

selected panels + presentations

selected panels + presentations

The UCSF REPAIR Postdoctoral Fellows
University of California, San Francisco, 2022

 

Black Feminist Storytelling

Black Futures Month, Keynote Speaker

University of California, Davis, 2022

 

MoAD Lit Poetry Feature

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

 

Power of the Pen

Tongo Eisen-Martin, reelaviolette botts-ward, 

Tyson Amir, Azariah Cole-Shephard, Joy Elan

Alameda County Public Library, 2021

bottom of page