Bettina Judd
Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought
PREORDER HERE
Sharing my work in progress “The Mitochondrial Eve Project” with the African American Studies Students at Princeton University.
Three alumnae of Spelman College, Bettina Judd (‘05) Chantal James (‘07) and Ariana Benson (‘19) read from their recent works. This event will be in person and streamed via Zoom.
Washington, DC stand up!
Come join Bettina Judd at one of her favorite Baltimore spots, Red Emmas. Book talk, discussion, and signing.
Featured local reader for the Annual AWP Cave Canem off site event.
In-Person Registration
Live-stream Registration
Experience Cave Canem’s signature off-site reading featuring a selection of Fellows from around the country.
Virtual Event! 1pm-2:30pm PST
Please join the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies department for the Walk of the Heroines annual lecture. This year's lecture by Professor Judd is titled "Feelin."
Feelin is not feeling. The poet, artist, and scholar Dr. Bettina Judd turns to the creative processes and contributions of Black women artists, writers, and poets to talk about feelin—how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work. Judd will take a word from African American Vernacular English and a concept from Black women to ask us to think critically about critical theory’s trend toward disembodying feelin. Judd's talk will bring us to how Black women artists offer alternatives to the concept of the human to include the erotic, the sexual, the painful, the joyful, the shameful, and the sensations and emotions that have no name as of yet. By incorporating visual art, narrative, and poetry, Judd will speak to how feelin calls for the development of research methods that acknowledge creative and emotionally rigorous work as productive.
Book Talk and discussion with the legendary Opal Moore at the historic feminist bookstore, now on Agnes Scott’s campus. The Event is hybrid so click here to register if you aren’t in the Atlanta area!
Lecture: “The Meaning of Rage x The Practice of Love” by Bettina Judd 9:30AM
Poetry Reading 3:00PM
Discussion and book signing at Seattle’s iconic bookstore. Conversation with scholar and colleague Dian Million.
6:30 EST 23:30 GMT
Join us for the first public event which also celebrates the release of Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought. There will be a salon style talk with luminary thinkers in Black and Black feminist studies who will join Bettina Judd in discussion: Jessica Marie Johnson, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Izetta Autumn Mobley. #BLACKTERPS
Feeling is not feelin. As the poet, artist, and scholar Bettina Judd argues, feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work. Through interviews, close readings, and archival research, Judd draws on the fields of affect studies and Black studies to analyze the creative processes and contributions of Black women—from poet Lucille Clifton and musician Avery*Sunshine to visual artists Betye Saar, Joyce J. Scott, and Deana Lawson.
Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought makes a bold and vital intervention in critical theory’s trend toward disembodying feeling as knowledge. Instead, Judd revitalizes current debates in Black studies about the concept of the human and about Black life by considering how discourses on emotion as they are explored by Black women artists offer alternatives to the concept of the human. Judd expands the notions of Black women’s pleasure politics in Black feminist studies that include the erotic, the sexual, the painful, the joyful, the shameful, and the sensations and emotions that yet have no name. In its richly multidisciplinary approach, Feelin calls for the development of research methods that acknowledge creative and emotionally rigorous work as productive by incorporating visual art, narrative, and poetry.
The Furious Flower Poetry Center is the nation's first academic center for Black poetry. Furious Flower was established on the James Madison University campus to serve creative writers, literary and cultural scholars, and poetry lovers everywhere.
ONLINE EVENT
Weds. 4.14 6pm
Telling Stories: Medicine and Institutional Racism
[Register Here]
Speakers: Bettina Judd (Gender, Women and Sexuality, U Washington), Raymond Givens (Internal Medicine, Columbia University)
Respondent: Matthew Sandler (American Studies, Columbia University)
Moderator: Rita Charon (Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics)
Co-sponsor: Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics
Please join us next week, Monday March 15 @ 12:30pm for the start of the Medicine, Health, and Representation Speaker Series. Dr. Bettina Judd, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington will be giving a poetry reading from her book, Patient., which draws on historical evidence of 19th-century medical experimentation on Black women, scholarly explorations of the body and the archive, and personal medical history. We hope you will join us for this poetic exploration of issues related to race, gender, and science. Please feel free to distribute widely and encourage your students to attend. Full schedule and flyer below. Please register via Zoom to receive meeting links.
Medicine, Health, and Representation Speaker Series - Spring 2021 Schedule
Monday, March 15, 2021, 12:30-1:30 PM PST [ZOOM LINK to register]
“Poems from Patient.”
Dr. Bettina Judd
Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies, University of Washington
Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art literature and music to develop feminist thought. Judd will be reading selections from her poetry collection, Patient.:
“...Patient., is about recovery in many senses: recovery of the subjectivity of several historical figures, through the recovery, reconstitution, and telling of their stories—among them Anarcha Wescott, Betsey Harris, Lucy Zimmerman, Joice Heth, Saartjie Baartman, and Henrietta Lacks, who were infamously “patients” or subjects of inspection and “plunder” by, among others, J. Marion Sims, the controversial gynecologist, and P.T. Barnum, showman and circus founder. Sims (and the speculum) and Barnum are the featured antagonists in many of these flawlessly empathetic poems, but an unnamed speaker who adds a contemporary voice to the lyric chorus implicates those in charge of her care during a present-day hospital stay at a teaching hospital—suggesting the linkage of modern medical treatment to the traumas vulnerable Black women, enslaved and not, suffered at the hands of unethical scientists and physicians in earlier eras. In the collection’s opening poem, the speaker reckons, “…verdicts come in a bloodline” and she determines “to recover” from “an ordeal with medicine” by “learn[ing] why ghosts come to me.” She ends her testimony by asking, “Why am I patient?” (Read that line in however many nuanced ways you want.) In this profoundly layered witnessing, the subject might be “in the dark ghetto of my body,” or “an idea of metaphors that live where bodies cannot.” Yet even as Judd vividly evokes the precise brutalities visited upon the Black female body and psyche—letting us see and hear women who “quieted/ broke into many pieces”—these poems also speak of “shedding something, ” “another kind of sloughing.” Ultimately, Patient. enacts a healing and move toward wholeness, recovery of, as one speaker puts it, “spirit [t
ONLINE EVENT
Reading with Derrick Weston Brown, JP Howard, and I.S. Jones for Anastacia Renee
12:30-2:00PM PST / 3:30-5:00PM EST
You can use this link to register for it.
In conjunction with Anastacia-Renée’s solo exhibition (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts, four of her most beloved poets will read their works in engagement with and in response to her exhibition. This reading will be interspersed with the poets’ reflections on the exhibitions and the ideas that fuel their practices.
Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA from American University. He is the founding Poet-In-Residence of Busboys and Poets and a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA workshops. His work has been published in Colorlines and Tidal Basin Review. His first collection of poems Wisdom Teeth was released in 2011 by PM Press. His second collection, On All Fronts, was published by Upper Rubber Boot Press in March 2019. He resides in Mount Rainier, MD.
JP Howard is an educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP was a featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and was a Split this Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism finalist. JP is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press and has received fellowships and/or grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary, Astraea and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY-based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Slowdown podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, Anomaly, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, Muzzle Magazine, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is one of three current general Poetry Editors for Women's Studies Quarterly (WSQ) and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online.
I.S. Jones is a queer American Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. I. S. hosts a month-long online workshop every April called The Singing Bullet. I.S. coedited The Young African Poets Anthology: The Fire That Is Dreamed Of (Agbowó, 2020) and served as the inaugural nonfiction guest editor for Lolwe. She is a Book Editor with Indolent Books, Editor at 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, freelances for Complex, Earmilk, NBC News THINK, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart Pulp, The Rumpus, The Offing, Shade Literary Arts, Blood Orange Review, Honey Literary and elsewhere. Her work was chosen by Khadijah Queen as a finalist for the 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at University of Wisconsin–Madison where she was the Inaugural 2019–2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient. Her forthcoming chapbook Spells Of My Name was selected by Newfound for the Emerging Poets Series.
Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought through affective registers. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Her poems and essays have appeared in Feminist Studies, Torch, The Offing, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. (2014) which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize in 2013.
Explore this collection of recommended reading for the exhibition available for purchase at the Museum Store’s website.
Privacy Statement: The event will be hosted on Zoom, an online platform. If joining by video, your image and/or name may be visible to others. When logging in, you may choose to hide your video, or to rename yourself using a pseudonym, if you would like to protect your privacy. While attendees are encouraged to join from a private location where discussion will not be overheard, confidentiality is not guaranteed. This session may be recorded and used by the Frye Art Museum in its sole discretion.
I will be hosting weekly readings with Auburn Avenue featuring the authors whose work is featured in the special issue on GENDER that I guest edited.
I will be hosting weekly readings with Auburn Avenue featuring the authors whose work is featured in the special issue on GENDER that I guest edited.
The Fourth Biennial Interventions Symposium of the Women's Studies Graduate Student Association.
A talk for the UW Geographies Colloquium
Featured Artists
CMarie Fuhrman is the author of Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems (Floodgate 2020) and co-editor of Native Voices (Tupelo 2019). She has published poetry and nonfiction in multiple journals including High Desert Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, Cutthroat a Journal of the Arts, Whitefish Review, Broadsided Press, Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, as well as several anthologies. CMarie is the 2019 recipient of the Grace Paley Fellowship at Under the Volcano in Tepotzlán, Mexico, a 2019 graduate of the University of Idaho's MFA program, regular columnist for the Inlander, and an editorial team member for Broadsided Press and Transmotion. CMarie resides in the mountains of West Central Idaho.
Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop Black feminist thought. Her collection of poems on the history of medical experimentation on Black women titledPatient. won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Mg Roberts is a teacher, poet and multimedia artist. She is the author of the poetry collection not so, sea (Durga Press, 2014) and Anemal Uter Meck (Black Radish Books, 2017). Her poems can be found in Dusie, Web Conjunctions, the Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. She’s a Kundiman Fellow, Kelsey Street Press member, and serves on the board of directors for Small Press Traffic, a San Francisco–based literary arts organization. She’s currently co-editing an anthology on the urgency of experimental writing written for and by writers of color.
A symposium hosted by the University of Washington, Seattle on Medical Ethics, Race, Health and Justice. Keynote: Dorothy Roberts.
1.45-3.15 pm Panel 2: Racial, Gender and Class Inequities
Karin Martin, Public Policy The Consequences of Criminal Justice Debt for Health and Beyond
Erika Blacksher, Bioethics and Humanities White Deaths of Despair: The Potential Roles of Whiteness and Racism
Bettina Judd, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies “Questions that Lean Toward the Body, Trip": Black Women’s Healthcare and the Ghosts in the Clinic
(Bettina Judd, Ashaki Jackson, Khadijah Queen) With courts that convict just 2 percent of rapists, calling out predators publicly has become a vital tool in promoting the safety of vulnerable individuals. The members of this panel discuss candidly how they worked to call out prominent sexual predators, offering concrete tools for healing and advocacy. Their bold, ambitious aim: to end victim-shaming and silencing, foster protection of assault and harassment victims, and encourage greater professionalization in literary workplaces.
Curated by Anastacia-Renée With Bettina Judd, Helen K. Thomas and Jourdan Imani Keith
Free
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
-Audre Lorde
Speak to Me! is an intergenerational reading series showcasing poets and writers curated, hosted and moderated by Anastacia-Renee, Seattle Civic Poet (Seattle Office of Arts & Culture). This special installment of the series celebrates the birth, life, and work of Audre Lorde.
The Henry is excited to welcome Mickalene Thomas for a conversation taking place in the galleries of MUSE: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête. In conversation with artist, writer, and performer Dr. Bettina Judd, Thomas will address her work in relation to influential artists and communities of inspiration and will speak to the ways that concepts of beauty, pleasure, and interior space unfold through the photographs.
Mickalene Thomas (lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) makes paintings, collages, photography, video, and installations that draw on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, Thomas constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors in order to examine how identity, gender, and sense-of-self are informed by the ways women (and “feminine” spaces) are represented in art and popular culture.
Dr. Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focuses on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
Join Dr. Bettina Judd, Anastacia Renée, and Christa Bell for a morning of collective dialogue inspired by the exhibition, MUSE: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête. Designed to be a safe space for an intracommunity conversation among Black women and Black gender non-conforming folks, this will be an outdoor, salon-style gathering. Facilitators will present a family reunion-inspired approach to generate a warm and creatively conducive environment for discussing core themes that emerge in the artwork of Thomas and the tête-à-tête artists, particularly as it relates to the lives of Black women.
Dr. Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focuses on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
The line-up for this event features stellar poets from near and far! Join us for readings by Derrick Weston Brown, Bennie Heron, Bettina Judd, Quenton Baker, and Anastacia-Renee.
Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing, from American University, and his work has appeared in such literary journals as The Little Patuxent Review, Colorlines, The This Mag, and Vinyl online. He worked as a bookseller and book buyer for a bookstore operated by the nonprofit Teaching for Change; founded The Nine on the Ninth, a critically acclaimed monthly poetry series; and was the 2012-2013 Writer- In-Residence of the Howard County Poetry Literary Society. Currently, he is a participating DC area author for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation’s Writers-in- Schools program. He is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and resides in Mount Rainier, Maryland. His debut collection of poetry, Wisdom Teeth, was released in April 2011 on Busboys and Poets Press/PM Press. You can follow him on social media on Facebook and on Instagram @theoriginalDerrickWestonBrown as well as his author website www.DerrickWestonBrown.com
Bennie Herron was born in San Diego, CA to a blue-collar family. He had a challenging but fulfilling childhood rooted in unconditional love; this childhood is the undercurrent of his writing and social advocacy. He always knew and believed that one way he could transcend negative circumstances was through education, which would allow him to be a part of the solution regarding issues that plagued his community and the world alike. After obtaining a Bachelors in Psychology at San Diego State University, he later went on to obtain a masters in social work. Most recently he received his MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in contemporary poetry from National University. In 2012, his first full-length poetry collection greens was published by Tintavox Independent Press. In February 2018, he released a collection of prose and poems titled word to mother with West Vine Press. The poems are a reflection of his attempt to add on and never take away.
Bettina Judd, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women’s creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop Black feminist thought. Her collection of poems on the history of medical experimentation on Black women titled Patient. won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize.
Quenton Baker is a poet and educator from Seattle. His current focus is anti-blackness and the afterlife of slaver. His work has appeared in Jubilat, Vinyl, Apogee, Pinwheel, Poetry Northwest, The James Franco Review, and Cura and in the anthologies Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Southern Maine and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is a 2017 Jack Straw fellow and is the recipient of a James W. Ray Venture Project award from Artist Trust. His first collection, This Glittering Republic, came out from Willow Books in 2016.
Anastacia-Reneé is Civic Poet of Seattle and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is a hybrid genre writer, workshop facilitator and multivalent performance artist. She is the author of four books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.), (Gramma Press), Answer(Me) (Argus Press), and 26 (Dancing Girl Press) and her poetry, prose and fiction have been published widely.
The Seattle Erotic Art Festival is known worldwide for its comprehensive collection of international fine art celebrating the diversity of human sexual expression. The incredible creativity with which artists approach the subject of erotica is captured in all manner of visual media: painting, photography, sculpture, assemblage, prints, mixed media, and more. The Seattle Erotic Art Festival, now in its 16th year, is more than just an art show; it’s an interactive experience with lectures by amazing educators like Bettina Judd and Ms. Briq House, art tours with festival artists, a class on flirting skillfully with fans, and a myriad of ways for patrons to experience art. And remember, observation is a valid form of participation and consent is always respected.
World class performances await you, both on and off the stages. Local performance luminaries Luminous Pariah, Namii, Lowa De Boom Boom, Alyza DelPan-Monley, and San Francisco’s Shay Tiziano as the festival’s guest curators will blow you away with their exciting stage shows!
Interactive performance art at the Festival breaks the 4th wall by using the entirety of the festival space as the stage, as well as offering patrons a chance to become part of the performances. Interactive performers engage directly with our guests, creating an immersive environment.
We are proud to present world-class erotic art that is rarely seen in mainstream culture and redefines boundaries in exciting new ways. Get your tickets now to experience our delightful world of erotic art!
with Regina N. Bradley, Timothy Anne Burnside, Bettina Judd, and Fredara M. Hadley
Conference Janet Jackson’s 1993 sultry remake of the song “That’s the Way Love Goes” opens with the line “Like a moth to a flame burned by the fire.” While Jackson is talking about the ups and downs of how love manifests itself, the imagery of the moth being burned by a flame also applies to how Black women attempt to view and position themselves in American society. Of particular interest is how Black women hold a peculiar space in popular culture: their bodies and cultural expressions are emulated, their style duplicated, but no room is made to recognize their agency. They are, in essence, burned by the very flame that they are attempting to master. The imposed expectations and biases placed upon black women about how to perform race, (hyper)sexuality, and class –in all senses of the word – also impact their autonomy. Black women’s search for space in memory, in culture, and in themselves is especially significant in popular music.
