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

Patricia Hill Collins

4.38 · Rating details · 4,702 ratings · 123 reviews

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for ...more

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published December 9th 1999 by Routledge (first published 1990)

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Sep 01, 2012 Rowena rated it it was amazing

Shelves: race, sociology, feminism

"Race and gender may be analytically distinct, but in Black women’s everyday lives, they work together.” - Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought

I find it difficult to summarize books like this, ones which contain such comprehensive content. Although focusing on African-American feminist theory, Collins says the theory can be applied to any black diasporic woman because, “Women of African descent are dispersed globally, yet the issues we face may be similar.”

And reading the content I beli ...more

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Jul 31, 2014 Zanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, philosophy, 500gbw

Not really a review, more a butterfly-view.

I had a rare flash of brilliance and decided to read the glossary first. This kind of sensible idea rarely occurs to me. I was immediately struck by Collins' definition of

intersectionality: analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation and age form mutually constructing features of social organisation, which shape Black women's experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women

In other words, intersectional ...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbtq, read-in-2009, feminism-womens-gender-studies, race-ethnicity-racism

Everyone should read this book. I read this for the first time during a women's studies course as an undergrad, but it works so well, as she states, outside of academia. I find her analysis of Black female blues singers as a source of feminist thought especially interesting. Anyone and everyone interested in social justice should read this book. And then read it again.

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Jan 03, 2011 Veronica rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: grad-school

What I loved the most about this book is that it is an academic text, but PCH doesn't waste time with jargon. If she uses it, she defines it almost immediately. There is also a glossary in the back of the book. A book that I will use a lot. So happy I was pushed to revisit this text.

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Jun 04, 2018 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: person-of-everything, 1-read-on-hand, r-goodreads, 500-wm, non-fiction, 4-star, antidote-think-twice-all, antidote-think-twice-read, r-2018, reviewed

4.5/5

In my own work I write no only what I want to read—understanding fully and indelibly that if I don't do it no one else is so vitally interested, or capable of doing it to my satisfaction—I write all the things I should have been able to read[.]

-Alice Walker

[I]t is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment[.]

-Audre Lorde

It's been good to get back into theory after so long a drought. My eagerness to rid my s 4.5/5

In my own work I write no only what I want to read—understanding fully and indelibly that if I don't do it no one else is so vitally interested, or capable of doing it to my satisfaction—I write all the things I should have been able to read[.]

-Alice Walker

[I]t is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment[.]

-Audre Lorde

It's been good to get back into theory after so long a drought. My eagerness to rid my shelves of some of the longer staying residents meant going back in time to when nonfiction was was in the realm of meaningless foibles and the effort of thinking was not considered something one should do "for fun", and I feel, once the challenges are over, I'll be doing work more intensive and less led by the carrot. Collins' work has its flaws and lack of comprehensiveness, but certain definitions and ideas she establishes have value in any academic realm intrinsically tied up with conversations about social justice. It was also exciting to recognize a number of referenced works as either read or in my future reading, and made for a feeling of, after much lackadaisical trash and inconsequential meanderings, finally coming back to the bedrock of my way of life. I am no black woman, but that doesn't forbid me from critically evaluating spaces in terms of, would a black (lesbian) woman be welcome here? If she wouldn't be, neither am I.

Autonomy and separatism are fundamentally different. Whereas autonomy comes from a position of strength, separatism comes from a position of fear. When we're truly autonomous we can deal with other kinds of people, a multiplicity of issues, and with difference, because we have formed a solid base of strength[s.]

-Barbara Smith

Firmly rooted in an exchange-based marketplace with its accompanying assumptions of rational economic decision making and white male control of the marketplace, this model of community stresses the rights of individuals to make decisions in their own self-interest, regardless of the impact on the larger society. Composed of a collection of unequal individuals who compete for greater shares of money as the medium of exchange, this model of community legitimates relations of domination either by denying they exist or by treating them as inevitable but unimportant[.]

As much reading as I've done in my life, I hadn't come across a text deemed academically credible that touched upon the cornerstone of my evaluating procedure, which takes into account the natural tendency of writing of any form to indoctrinate and, as a result, expects that authors give evidence that they know what they're doing and don't consider the trajectory of a fiction scribbler a free ride to spewing hatred and being congratulated for it. Collins' words in certain sectors were a veritable balm to my soul, as here we have a text that has been around for a tad longer than I've been alive, and it's saying exactly how I've been thinking and acting and writing for the past few years. The text was a give and take of this sort throughout, as while I certainly learned a great deal about how to avoid misogynoir of all sorts, I also took away principles that that served well in contexts outside those that the texts touched upon, namely mental illness and queerness beyond the realm of lesbianism. The fact that this didn't prove a five star and favorite is due to how inflexible the text was at parts, especially with the burden, despite all overt comments that denied such, put upon every single black woman to be responsible for both herself and all others of her race. Again, I'm not black, so I'm not reading this correctly, but the text did end on a rather pull yourself up by your bootstraps tone that got increasingly more jargon filled as time went on. Not as accessible as it claims to be, but not to the point of meriting passing by.

Hair type quality rapidly became the real symbolic badge of slavery, although like many powerful symbols, it was disguised...by the linguistic device of using the term 'black,' which nominally threw the emphasis to color[.]

Rather than emphasizing how a Black women's standpoint and its accompanying epistemology are different from those in Afrocentric and feminist analyses, I use Black women's experiences to examine points of contact between the two. Viewing an Afrocentric feminist epistemology in this way challenges additive analyses of oppression claiming that Black women have a more accurate view of oppression than do other groups. Such approaches suggest that oppression can be quantified and compared and that adding layers of oppression produces a potentially clearer standpoint...One implication of standpoint approaches is that the more subordinated the group, the purer the vision of the oppressed group. This is an outcome of the origins of standpoint approaches in Marxist social theory, itself an analysis of social structure rooted in [European] either/or dichotomous thinking. Ironically, by quantifying and ranking human oppressions, standpoint theorists invoke criteria for methodological adequacy characteristic of positivism. Although it is tempting to claim that Black women are more oppressed than everyone else and therefore have the best standpoint from which to understand the mechanisms, processes, and effects of oppression, this simply may not be the case.

This is the first book in a long time that's made me excited about all the other books I have left to read. Part of this is the sheer number of references to theoretical texts I have on hand. The other part is recognizing how few and far between the works are that encompass my moral compass style of academia, and thus how much I need to relish them while the rare experience is ongoing. Collins wears a bevy of hats throughout this, and when considering such, it's amazing, despite my quibbles, how holistic a paradigm she is able to offer in the face of a mainstream that would do anything to segregate and isolate and ultimately destroy such a full faithed comradery. A prime example of this is the number of quotes I gained that weren't Collins' words, indicating the wealth of a community of black women writers I've yet to experience, whether for the first time in the vein of Fannie Lou Hamer or in the next time in the form of Alice Walker. In either case, I have a long, fruitful, if difficult journey ahead of me, and that feeling is the most I can ask of any written work to provide.

An ethic of personal accountability is the final dimension of an alternative epistemology. Not only must individuals develop their knowledge claims through dialogue and present them in a style proving their concern for their ideas, but people are expected to be accountable for their knowledge claims.

You can but die if you make the attempt; and we shall certainly die if you do not.

-Maria W. Stewart

...more

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Jul 28, 2019 Tifanny Burks rated it it was amazing

Another book where I am not the same person at the end that I was at the beginning.

This book was healing to read. I feel seen. This book is another thank you to black women who give me expansive language to articulate my lived experiences under multiple forms of oppression.

I am thankful for now revisiting this book 3 years later with a different lens of being a community organizer.

The best part about this book 📖 is that it joins the league of books written by other black feminist scholars tha ...more

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Mar 26, 2017 BMR, LCSW rated it really liked it

Took a long time for me to finish this book, as it is very much a textbook...and I've been out of grad school for a few years now. The most recent edition isn't available at my library, so I read this 2nd Ed. I may still seek out the newer edition.

Recommended for anyone interested in feminist theories, political thought, and human rights

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Aug 06, 2015 Ruth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gender-race-and-class-course, critical-theory-book-club

This book creates an argument about the particular experiences of groups of people and overarching theories of knowledge. It says that if a group of people, in this case US Black women, is consistently ruled untrustworthy or unknowledgeable, a major epistemological shift is required to get other groups of people to hear their testimony and expertise. This is something I've been thinking about a lot. I felt validated seeing this idea spelled out so beautifully and clearly by an African American s ...more

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Mar 07, 2008 Tameika rated it really liked it

She offers an explored analysis of the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class as well as its practical applications. She discuss self-identification, the politics of self empowerment, how woman are essential elements in nationalist thinking and etc. I do wish she discussed the politics of sexuality a bit more.

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Oct 08, 2011 Allison rated it it was amazing

This book blew my mind. One of the most impressive parts of it is P.H.C.'s command of black women's history in the U.S. It's so exciting to read about women who have produced "black feminist thought" in the U.S. through writing, music, and oral history since early 1800s, and before.

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Sep 22, 2009 Sarah Hackley rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommended to Sarah by: BLS 3024

While I enjoyed her theories, her writing style is unnecessarily obtuse and repetitive.

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Oct 12, 2010 Linda Le rated it it was amazing

if u claim that u're an ally/progressive advocate of feminism, then do urself a favor & read this ...more

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Oct 06, 2020 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: people-and-society, non-fiction

Brought together a lot of different things that I had kind of but not really understood before. It's written in a way that I found really clear and accessible for a non-sociologist. I'd highly recommend this if you're interested in knowledge organization or meaning creation. The discussion of using multiple standpoints to generate understanding of how dominance and oppression function was super exciting to me. Just so illuminating and thought-provoking.

(My twitter is usually locked, I'm just pos ...more

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Apr 25, 2017 Victoria rated it really liked it

This author says in the intro "I'm going to say this in the most basic language possible so it's very accessible." This was not true lol. But it was still good and thought-provoking and a great synthesis of a lot of seemingly disparate work into one big thing. Pretty cool.

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May 22, 2009 Rosemari rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books

This book was my guiding light while working on my thesis, "Deconstructing Auth Jemima." Patricia Hill Collins is underread and underrated. I want to sit at her feet. It remains an important reference book.

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Jun 09, 2020 Alex Knipp rated it it was amazing

I read a few chapters of this book last semester for a class on quantitative and qualitative research methods, but just finishing reading it among calls to commit to anti-racist research practices. If you are working in academia at all, I think this is an essential work. If you are doing research with human subjects, I think this is an essential work. And if you are in the practice of knowledge production or translation, I think this is an essential work. As a white researcher and student, it is ...more

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Apr 03, 2017 Benjamin Fasching-Gray rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: labor, parenting, black-freedom-struggle, resistance, feminism

I especially like when Collins uses non-academic statements from black women talking about their own direct experiences to illustrate her points. I found myself quoting some of that in my day to day conversations with people.

There were a couple of moments where I was like, "Is it weird to be a white dude reading this?" But I think, even though there are sadly very few black women in my environment right now, that it is all somehow extremely relevant. Collins makes the point a few times that Blac ...more

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Apr 11, 2017 Aliya Jabbar rated it it was amazing

This book is the comprehensive, engaging handbook on black feminism that I'd always hoped to find. PHC harbors a deep disdain for the predominance of the kind of scholarship that is impersonal and abstract, and in Black Feminist Thought, she broadly explores and theorizes while peppering her essays with personal anecdotes and extracts from the literary, artistic and academic works of other black women.

The result is a well-organized, deeply insightful collection of essays with plenty of new argu ...more

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Jul 01, 2017 Victoria rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017-to-read

Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the book yet (due back at the library) but I can speak to what I read so far. This is an important read for feminist theorists, and feminists in general. As a white woman, this book was especially enlightening, though I want to stress that I am not the target audience, either. My main criticism is the redundancy and length; I think this work would have benefited from some word trimming and condensing, as I often struggled to remain focused and/or found mysel ...more

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Jul 06, 2020 Gemma O'Brien rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

As a white British woman with a strong interest in feminism I knew this book centring African American women was not addressed to me specifically yet it is vital reading in order to comprehend the specifics of Black feminism and how global feminism has assumed a largely dominantly white Western bias on matters of female empowerment, enabled largely through systems of white privilege. It is a hugely important book for anyone to read in order to understand systemic oppression, the matrix of domina ...more

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Jun 06, 2018 Dwight Davis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is an incredibly helpful book. Collins makes a few constructive arguments, but for the most part offers an overview of the major themes in black feminist thought, offering a repository and guidebook to those new to the discipline.

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Feb 10, 2018 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: womanism-black-feminism, sociology, philosophy, feminism

Absolutely brilliant. Longer review to come.

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Apr 28, 2019 Filipa rated it it was amazing

to buy in physical form and re-read

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Jun 09, 2020 Dan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Hard indeed to imagine a more comprehensive or more lucidly written book on the topic of Black feminism. I’m in absolute awe of Patricia Hill Collins’ abilities as a scholar, a researcher, a theorist, and a writer.

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Sep 18, 2020 Angela rated it it was amazing

Professor Patricia Hill Collins is a feminist academic and the author of books and articles that opens up the experiences of Black women the juncture of race, gender, sexuality, class and nationality. She was inspired by her own encounters of being an intellectual Black women and feeing "one of the few," or the only female, working class and African American person in her public and private environments. Collins reflects on this in her writing in which she reports feeling isolated and silenced b Professor Patricia Hill Collins is a feminist academic and the author of books and articles that opens up the experiences of Black women the juncture of race, gender, sexuality, class and nationality. She was inspired by her own encounters of being an intellectual Black women and feeing "one of the few," or the only female, working class and African American person in her public and private environments. Collins reflects on this in her writing in which she reports feeling isolated and silenced because of her race and gender within white, male dominated institutions. Through her writing and sociological academia, she found her voice, became a distinguished University professor and in 2008 she became the first Black woman to become the president of the of the American Sociological Association. Collins work confronts the way that female thoughts are trivialize and exclude both inside and outside of academia along with giving meaning to the experiences of being a Black woman in a world defined by white experiences and thought. Along with her focus on oppressions she also articulates daily and historical cultures of resistances to domination.
Patricia Hill Collins work is concerned with the social and historical intersecting oppressions and resistances that are connected to the lives of Black woman and the complex ways in which intersectionality forms a double burden for them. She highlights the issue of Black women being unable or unwilling to voice their experiences of oppressions in White, masculine environments and how challenging these problems are blocked by those who have control. In Western academic institutions the people who control and validated new knowledge claims are white males from elite backgrounds. This means that knowledge made by Black females is less likely to be validated than any other group of people. Examples of these issues are highlighted in the University and College Union report which exposes major concerns with stereotyping and the bullying of Black females that prevent them from being promoted or encourages them to opt out of academic routes. Collins maintains that women of colour have a double suffering as the ‘outsider within’ being both Black but not male and female but not white. This suffering has been normalised by negative stereotypes such as Black women as sexual objects, angry and irrational, stereotypes that make their oppression unrecognisable.
In her book ‘Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment’, (1990) Collins contributes to the understanding of intersectionality by introduction of the ‘matrix of domination,’ a concept which stresses how oppressions such as ‘age, race and gender’ or ‘sexuality and class’ are connected to produce different types of domination. The ‘matrix of domination’ theorises that power falls into four different domains. The interpersonal domain reflects how daily interactions act to make systems of power, the disciplinary domain relates to the different rules that groups of people are subject to, such as how Black women are less likely to gain justice in rape cases. The hegemonic domain explains how institutions are organised to places some people over others and cultural domain which hides discrimination, for example the message that Black people are more violent so more prone to imprisonment.
Collins contends that women of colour turn to ‘subjugated knowledge,’ a term she gives to the conversation, poetry, literature, music and dance that they use to express their experiences. She talks of the importance, as a form of resistance, for marginalised groups of women to have space in which to be heard, reclaim and define their own knowledge about themselves. An example of ‘subjugated knowledge’ can be found in the popular Beyoncé visual album, Lemonade, in which songs like Sorry can be interpreted as an ‘unapologetically black’ refusal of the traditional male domination and Formation, a metaphor used to call women to come together. There are common experiences that groups of women share, and it is important that they have a platform of which to understand and interpret themselves. The turn to ‘subjugated knowledge’ helps women to acknowledge their beautiful cultures, histories and customs along with helping them find ways to resist oppression.
Collins has used her personal and intellectual experiences to confront the way that Black female thoughts is misrepresented or excluded within mainstream epistemology. Her work in Black Feminist Thought and other publications has influenced the battle against the essentialism of marginalised groups of women and through her work they are brought closer understanding themselves and valuing their experiences. Collins has helped in pinpointing how individual social locations are connected to lived experiences and made it easy to identify how marginalisation works through intersecting oppressions and not because of malfunctions of family life, ancestral domination or any other cultural message given for their oppression. She states that “Black women’s experiences have never fit the logic of work in the public sphere juxtaposed to family obligations in the private sphere” (Collins, 2000). The assumption that all women experience public and private life in the same way is challenged by Collins who provides a clear picture of how race and class affect personal and public experiences. Patricia Hill Collins lays open the stories of women with intersecting oppressions, who feel like outsiders within both society and higher education along with helping them to reflect on their own systems for creating knowledge.
...more

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May 10, 2019 Henry Cooksley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

If the kinds of things you are interested in include e.g. sociology, social epistemology, intersectionality, compassionate politics... I would strongly suggest that you read this. I was looking forward to reading this for a number of years, and I'm pleased to say that it more than lived up to my expectations. Collins has a great skill in taking a complex topic and treating it with the distant, subject-object style you might find in any other social science textbook. Having said that, the compass If the kinds of things you are interested in include e.g. sociology, social epistemology, intersectionality, compassionate politics... I would strongly suggest that you read this. I was looking forward to reading this for a number of years, and I'm pleased to say that it more than lived up to my expectations. Collins has a great skill in taking a complex topic and treating it with the distant, subject-object style you might find in any other social science textbook. Having said that, the compassion and love she brings to this subject appear obvious throughout the book.

It's hard to pick out quotes without their context, as I think Collins' work is better to read in long form, but I'll try and pick some quotes anyway that were notable to me for whatever reason. I took a lot from the epistemology chapter because that was my favourite, not because it's the only good one!

On the need for social epistemology:

“Several requirements typify positivist methodological approaches. First, research methods generally require a distancing of the researcher from her or his 'object' of study by defining the researcher as a 'subject' with full human subjectivity and by objectifying the 'object' of study (Keller 1985; Asante 1987). A second requirement is the absence of emotions from the research process (Jaggar 1983). Third, ethics and values are deemed inappropriate in the research process, either as the reason for scientific inquiry or as part of the research process itself (Richards 1980). Finally, adversarial debates, whether written or oral, become the preferred method of ascertaining truth: The arguments that can withstand the greatest assault and survive intact become the strongest truths (Moulton 1983). [...] Such criteria ask African-American women to objectify ourselves, devalue our emotional life, displace our motivations for furthering knowledge about Black women, and confront in an adversarial relationship those with more social, economic, and professional power.”

On varieties of artistic self-expression:

“The polyrhythms in African-American music, in which no one main beat subordinates the others, is paralleled by the theme of individual expression in Black women's quilting. Black women quilters place strong color and patterns next to one another and see the individual differences not as detracting from each piece but as enriching the whole quilt (Brown 1989). This belief in individual uniqueness is illustrated by the value placed on personal expressiveness in African-American communities (Smitherman 1977; Kochman 1981; Mitchell and Lewter 1986). Johnetta Ray, an inner-city resident, describes this African-influenced emphasis on individual uniqueness: “No matter how hard we try, I don't think black people will ever develop much of a herd instinct. We are profound individualists with a passion for self-expression” (Gwaltney 1980, 228).”

On intersecting oppressions and the difficulty of simply adding up political perspectives/making interpersonal comparisons:

“Rather than emphasizing how a Black women's standpoint and its accompanying epistemology differ from those of White women, Black men, and other collectivities, Black women's experiences serve as one specific social location for examining points of connection among multiple epistemologies. Viewing black feminist epistemology in this way challenges additive analyses of oppression claiming that Black women have a more accurate view of oppression than do other groups. Such approaches suggest that oppression can be quantified and compared and that adding layers of oppression produces a potentially clearer standpoint (Spelman 1988). One implication of some uses of standpoint theory is that the more subordinated the group, the purer the vision available to them. This is an outcome of the origins of standpoint approaches in Marxist social theory, itself reflecting the binary thinking of its Western origins. Ironically, by quantifying and ranking human oppressions, standpoint theorists invoke criteria for methodological accuracy that resemble those of positivism. Although it is tempting to claim that Black women are more oppressed than everyone else and therefore have the best standpoint from which to understand the mechanisms, processes, and effects of oppression, this is not the case. [...] Instead, those ideas that are validated as true by African-American women, African-American men, Latina lesbians, Asian-American women, Puerto Rican men, and other groups with distinctive standpoints, with each group using the epistemological approaches growing from its unique standpoint, become the most 'objective' truths. Each group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge. But because each group perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group becomes better able to consider other groups' standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups' partial perspectives. [...] Partiality, and not universality, is the condition of being heard; individuals and groups forwarding knowledge claims without owning their position are deemed less credible than those who do.”

This should be high up on any reading list covering sociology, social science research methods, political science, feminism, or African-American studies. Collins has another book just looking at intersectionality, but if you can only pick one of her works to read, then I would probably make it this one. ...more

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Aug 13, 2015 April rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, critical-theory

I read the 2nd edition and would be interested to take a look at the 1st and see how things changed. I loved a lot of the broader principles Collins brought forth, but there were many ways in which the book just felt very restrictive. In rejecting the stereotypes applied to Black women, she seems to reinscribe alternative categories of Black feminism that are just as limiting, especially the lengthy section on motherhood as an essential characteristic of Black womanhood.

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Feb 24, 2009 Tasha rated it it was amazing

I had the privilege of being one of Dr. Collin's students at the University of Cincinnati. I learned so much from this woman and her gender study class. She along with some other great writers such a Bell Hooks and others helped me shape my own definition of what it means to be a black woman in America.

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Jul 25, 2007 Lucas rated it really liked it

I really like Patricia Hill Collins and this is no exception, though I found much of what she filed under "Black feminism" really applied to feminism writ large. Still, it's an important work and very readable.

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Jun 27, 2007 Oren Whightsel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: theory

patricia hill collins is one of the most important voices in feminism. this book is a must read...especially the 10th anniv. ed. because she updates her research and further develops her arguments.

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About Patricia Hill Collins

Patricia Hill Collins

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Patricia Hill Collins (born May 1, 1948) is currently a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and the past President of the American Sociological Association Council.

Collins' work primarily concerns issues involving feminism and gender wi Patricia Hill Collins (born May 1, 1948) is currently a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and the past President of the American Sociological Association Council.

Collins' work primarily concerns issues involving feminism and gender within the African-American community. She first came to national attention for her book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, originally published in 1990.

Collins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1948. The only daughter of a factory worker and a secretary, Collins attended the Philadelphia public schools.

After obtaining her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 1969, she continued on to earn a Master of Arts Degree in Teaching from Harvard University in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, she was a teacher and curriculum specialist at St Joseph Community School, among two others, in Boston. She continued on to become the Director of the Africana Center at Tufts University until 1980, after which she completed her doctorate in sociology back at Brandeis in 1984.

While earning her PhD, Collins worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1982. In 1990, Collins published her first book, "Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment". A revised tenth anniversary edition of the book was published in 2000, and subsequently translated into Korean in 2009.
While working at Tufts, she married Roger L. Collins in the year 1977, a professor of education at the University of Cincinnati, with whom she has one daughter, Valerie L. Collins.

In 1990, Collins was the recipient of the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award. She was later awarded the Jessie Bernard Award by the American Sociological Association in 1993. For her book Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (Routledge, 2005), she was presented the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award in 2007.

Collins is recognized as a social theorist, drawing from many intellectual traditions; her more than 40 articles and essays have been published in a wide range of fields, including philosophy, history, psychology, and most notably sociology. Moreover, Collins was the recipient of a Sydney Spivack Dissertation Support Award.

The University of Cincinnati named Collins The Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Sociology in 1996, making her the first ever African-American, and only the second woman, to hold this position. She received emeritus status in the Spring of 2005, and became a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. The University of Maryland named Collins a Distinguished University Professor in 2006.

(from Wikipedia) ...more

Books by Patricia Hill Collins

Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism

From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism

Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice

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“The mind of the man and the mind of the woman is the same, but this business of living makes women use their minds in ways that men don't even have to think about.” — 3 likes

“as social conditions change, so must the knowledge and practices designed to resist them” — 2 likes

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

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Preview — Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins

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

Get A Copy

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Lists with This Book

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About Patricia Hill Collins

Books by Patricia Hill Collins

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Trivia About Black Feminist Th...

Quotes from Black Feminist Th...

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