bell hooks

bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, was an American philosopher, educator, author and social critic who held the position of Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College in Kentucky. Writing under a pen name drawn from her maternal great-grandmother and rendered in lowercase to keep the focus on her writing rather than herself, she published nearly forty books and numerous scholarly articles addressing race, feminism and social class. Her work examined how race, capitalism and gender intersect to produce and perpetuate oppression and class domination, and it is considered foundational to the modern idea of intersectionality. She began her academic career in 1976 teaching English and ethnic studies at the University of Southern California and went on to teach at Stanford, Yale, New College of Florida and the City College of New York before joining Berea College in 2004, where she founded the bell hooks Institute a decade later.