BELL HOOKS

Author, academic, feminist & social activist

A celebrated social justice educator, bell hooks’ works in activism, feminism, race, and power have become canonical for teachers of all grade levels across the United States.

Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with the name Gloria Jean Watkins, she was educated at Stanford and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before getting her Ph.D. in Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

After beginning her writing career as a poet, she moved more ardently into cultural criticism. It was through this first creative work that she donned the moniker bell hooks, which intentionally uses a lower-case to highlight the text. As a professor who would work on faculty at universities and colleges as prestigious as Yale and Oberlin, hooks became a leading feminist voice for a new generation of students and teachers. 

Her landmark work came in 1994 with the publication of Teaching to Transgress, which ultimately argued that educators are uniquely capable of uplifting marginalized and vulnerable students when they resist power structures based on race, gender, and class. When teachers incorporate this kind of feminist pedagogy into their practice, students are given greater opportunities to develop critical thinking tools.

Beginning in 2004, bell hooks lived in Berea, Kentucky, and worked as a Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College.

hooks passed away in Berea in December 2021.