bell hooks: A Celebration of her Life and Works

The department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies is excited to present the celebration of the life and works of renowned author, scholar and activist, bell hooks.

bell hooks (1952-2021) was one of the most influential voices in feminism in the latter half of the twentieth century. hooks, perhaps more than any other theorist, reminded everyone that black women, Indigenous women, working class women, and others are all part of the feminist movement, even as it has historically focused on the well-being of white middle-class women. hooks coined the phrase “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to sum up the interlocking systems of domination in the world. hooks was also a radical teacher whose book Teaching to Transgress has influenced many people’s pedagogical practices. But above all, hooks believed in love.

In 2015, she told the philosopher George Yancy that, “I believe wholeheartedly that the only way out of domination is love, and the only way into really being able to connect with others, and to know how to be, is to be participating in every aspect of your life as a sacrament of love.” hooks was also a storyteller, using storytelling in her teaching, her theoretical work, her children’s books, and her two memoirs, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood and Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life.

This conference celebrates the centrality and inestimable important of bell hooks to the work of gender studies, women’s studies, sexuality studies, critical race studies, masculinity studies, and transformative pedagogy.