Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

Patricia Hill Collins is an African American scholar specializing in intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class. Collins’s educational and professional experiences make her an ideal person to write about intersectionality and Black feminist thought. Collins received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1969 and a Master of Arts degree in Teaching from Harvard University in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, Collins stepped away from higher education to work as a middle school teacher, a curriculum specialist, and a community organizer, experiences that spurred her interest in social justice. From 1976 to 1980, Collins served as Director of the Africana Center at Tufts University, where she promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion by bringing the research and culture of Black communities to campus. In 1982, while earning her PhD in Sociology from Brandeis University, Collins joined the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where she taught for the remainder of her career. Collins retired from her position in 2005 as the Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Professor of Sociology. In 2009, she became the first Black woman president of the American Sociological Association (“Patricia Hill Collins.