Bettina Judd

Bettina Judd is an African-American interdisciplinary writer, scholar, artist, and performer.

Early life and education Judd was born in Baltimore and raised in Southern California. She received her bachelor's degree in Comparative Women’s Studies and English from Spelman College in 2005, her master's degree in Women's Studies from University of Maryland in 2007, and her PhD in Women's Studies in 2014, also from the University of Maryland. Her dissertation, Feelin Feminism: Black Women's Art as Feminist Thought , is an analysis of how various oppressions that affect black women are felt, and makes the assertion that Black Women's creative process and output is a site of feminist and womanist thought. She has named her early poetic influences as: her grandmother (a poet and a mathematician for the Department of Defense), her mother, and Maya Angelou.

Artistic and scholarly career As a poet, Judd has been a Cave Canem fellow in 2007, 2008, and 2011. Her poems and other writings have been published in literary magazines, journals and anthologies including but not limited to as Torch, Meridians , and Mythium, the latter which nominated her contribution for a Pushcart Prize. Judd has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center, and The University of Maryland.

In 2013, Judd's manuscript for Patient., her first book of poems, won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. Patient. was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014. Broadly, the collection is a poetic analysis of scientific racism and the evidence 19th century medical experimentation on black women that built the modern day practice of gynecology. The collection also inhabits the voices of other historical black women who were subjected to experimentation and exploitation such as Saartjie Baartman and Henrietta Lacks. The collection was partially inspired by Judd's own experiences at a teaching hospital. where she read poems from Patient. and discussed its subject matter.