Faculty/Staff Profile
Professor Botts has over twenty years of experience as a professor and over fifteen years of experience as a practicing attorney.
Her experience as a law professor includes having taught at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, the San Joaquin College of Law, St. Francis School of Law and Purdue University Global Law School where she has taught courses in Constitutional Law, Race and the Law, Critical Race Theory, Electronic Legal Research, Directed Research in Legal Problems, Academic Legal Writing, and Introduction to Legal Analysis.
Her experience as a professor of philosophy and legal studies includes appointments at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she was a Fellow in Law and Philosophy, Oberlin College, where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow, Hendrix College, and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, where she has taught, in addition to a wide array of philosophy courses, Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedural Law, and First Amendment Law.
Her practice experience includes fellowships at the D.C. Public Defender Service, the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the D.C. law firm specializing in Native American Law (Tribal Rights), Hobbs, Strauss, Dean and Walker. She has also worked extensively in civil litigation and estate planning.
Professor Botts’ legal scholarship is centered in Constitutional Law, Race and the Law, and Jurisprudence, all of which are key themes in her book, For Equals Only: Race, Equality, and the Equal Protection Clause (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) and her law review article, “Antidiscrimination Law and the Multiracial Experience: A Reply to Nancy Leong,” 10 Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, 191-218 (Summer 2013). Her current research project is a law review article on substantive due process and abortion rights.
Professor Botts is a member of the Maryland and District of Columbia bars.
Professor Botts’ Recommended Reading on Racial Justice:
Academic Monograph
Botts, Tina F. For Equals Only: Race, Equality, and the Equal Protection Clause, Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, September, 2018.
Co-authored Academic Monograph
Botts, Tina F. and Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought, 6th Ed., New York, NY: Routledge Press, May 2024.
Botts, Tina F. and Rosemarie Tong. Feminist Thought, 5th Ed., Boulder, CO: Westview Press, July 2017.
Edited Volume
Botts, Tina F., editor, Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, February 2016: Reviewed by Lori Gallegos in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Hypatia Reviews Online
Peer-Reviewed Philosophy Articles
Botts, Tina F. “In Black and White: A Hermeneutic Argument Against Transracialism,” Res Philosophica, Volume 95, Issue 2, April 2018.
Botts, Tina F. “Race and Method: The Tuvel Affair,” Philosophy Today, Volume 62, Winter 2018:
Botts, Tina F. "Boylan’s Agency Justification for Natural Human Rights and Group Rights," in The Journal of Applied Ethics and Philosophy, Vol. 8, September 2016, pp. 16-22.
Botts, Tina F. “Legal Hermeneutics,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, November 2015.
Botts, Tina F., Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntur Mallarangeng, and Quayshawn Spencer. Research Note: “What is the State of Blacks in Philosophy?” Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2014.
Law Reviews
Fernandes (Botts), Tina. “Antidiscrimination Law and the Multiracial Experience: A Reply to Nancy Leong,” 10 Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, 191-218, Summer 2013.
Academic Book Chapters
Botts, Tina F., “How Can Fiction Contribute to Critical Race Theory?” in Reshaping Philosophy: Michael Boylan’s Narrative Fiction, Wanda Teays, ed. (2022)
Botts, Tina F., "Dasein and Intersectional Identity,” in Heidegger and the Human, Ingo Farin and Jeff Malpas, eds. (SUNY, 2022).
Botts, Tina F., “Gadamer and Race Theory” in The Gadamerian Mind, Theodore George and Gert-Jan van der Heiden, eds. (Abingdon/Oxfordshire: Routledge, August 10, 2021).
Botts, Tina F. “The Genealogy and Viability of the Concept of Intersectionality” in The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy, Ann Garry, Serene J. Khader, and Alison Stone, eds. London: Taylor and Francis, July 2017, pp. 343-357.
Botts, Tina F. “The Concept of Race and Equal Protection Law” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, Naomi Zack, editor, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, December 2016, pp. 526-536.
Botts, Tina F. “Multiracial Americans and Racial Discrimination” in Race Policy and Multiracial Americans, Kathleen Korgen, ed. Bristol, UK: Policy Press, January 2016, pp. 81-100.
Botts, Tina F. “Hermeneutics, Race, and Gender,” in The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics, Jeff Malpas and Hans- Helmuth Gander, eds., London: Taylor and Francis, 2014, pp. 498-518.
Botts, Tina F. and Rosemarie Tong. “Women of Color Feminisms” in Tong, Rosemarie, Feminist Thought. 4th Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013, pp. 211-253.
Book Reviews
Botts, Tina F. Review of Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First Century America, by Inderpal Grewal, Duke University Press, 2017, Hypatia Reviews Online, June 2019.
Botts, Tina F. Review of Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly About Racism in America by George Yancy, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, 9.1, Winter 2019, pp. 166-173.
Botts, Tina F. Review of A Hermeneutic Approach to Gender and Other Social Identities by Lauren Swayne Barthold, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, Fall 2017, p. 17.
Botts, Tina F. Review of Why Race and Gender Still Matter: An Intersectional Approach, edited by Namita Goswami, Maeve O’Donovan, and Lisa Yount, Pickering & Chato, 2014, Hypatia Reviews Online, 2015.
Botts, Tina F. Review of The Philosophy of Race by Albert Atkin, Acumen Publishing, 2012, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, June 13, 2013.
Journal Editor
Botts, Tina F., Editor of Special Issue, “Being-with Ethics: Mitsein and the Possibility of a Hermeneutic Ethics,” Philosophies, Winter 2019/2020.