eugenelang:BELL HOOKS SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCEPUBLIC EVENTS,...

eugenelang:

BELL HOOKS SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE

PUBLIC EVENTS, NOVEMBER 4–8, 2013

For more than three decades, bell hooks (née Gloria Watkins) has been recognized internationally as a scholar, poet, author, and radical thinker. The dozens of books and articles she has published span several genres, including cultural and political analyses and critiques, personal memoirs, poetry collections, and children’s books. Her writings cover topics of gender, race, class, spirituality, teaching, and the significance of media in contemporary culture. According to Dr. hooks, these topics must be understood as interconnected in the production of systems of oppression and class domination.

Dr. hooks has appeared in documentary films. She has been celebrated as one of our nation’s leading public intellectuals by The Atlantic Monthly and listed as one of Utne Reader’s “100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life.” She is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world.

When Dr. hooks published her first book, And There We Wept, in 1978, she released it under the name “bell hooks” for two reasons. The first was to honor her maternal grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, whom she has described as being “known for her snappy and bold tongue.” Secondly, and more broadly, the name, expressed in lowercase letters, de-emphasizes the author as person and instead focuses attention on the subject of her writing.

A topic prominent in Dr. hooks’ most recent writings is community and communion, the ability of loving communities to overcome race, class, and gender inequalities. Another prominent theme in her work has been education, which she views as a practice of freedom. Dr. hooks has called for an approach to learning that nurtures “radical critical consciousness.” “The academy is not paradise,” she wrote in 1994’s Teaching to Transgress. “But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility.”

The bell hooks residency at The New School is an opportunity for students to engage with education as a practice of freedom. They can participate in a series of intimate conversations and public dialogues on subjects ranging from politics to love, race to spirituality, gender to lived bodies.

Monday, November 4

Talking Teaching
General seminar for faculty
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Open only to faculty. RSVP required to Heather O’Brien at obrienh@newschool.edu

Tuesday, November 5

Talking Race: Left and Right
A New School dialogue 
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 12:00-2:00 p.m. 
Open to students, faculty, and staff

Join bell hooks, dean Stephanie Browner of Eugene Lang College, and others for an informal and searching conversation about race at Lang and The New School generally.
Seating is limited. Talking Race RSVP elcdean@newschool.edu

Beyond the Body?
bell hooks in conversation with Eve Ensler 
Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, 5:00-6:30 p.m. 
Open to the public; admission free. Seating is first-come, first-served.

Join bell hooks and Eve Ensler, the Tony Award-winning playwright (The Vagina Monologues), performer, and activist, for a conversation about gender and lived bodies, spirituality, and feminism.

Friday, November 8

Feminism Forever: Theory and Practice
Undergraduate master class 
Hirshon Suite, 55 West 13th Street, 12:30-2:30 p.m.
Open to undergraduate students of all divisions. To RSVP, students are asked to share their interest in the event via a Google form. This event is limited to 25 students, and space will be made available in order of RSVPs received. 

Black Female Voices: Who Is Listening?
bell hooks in conversation with Melissa Harris-Perry
Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, 3:30-5:00 p.m. 
Open to the public; admission free. Seating is first-come, first-served.

Join bell hooks and Melissa Harris-Perry, founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South, for a conversation about race, black womanhood, politics, media, and love. Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane Universtiy, an author, and the host of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry.

Join the conversation #bellhooksTNS

http://www.newschool.edu/lang/bell-hooks-scholar-in-residence/