Biography from the University of Miami Website

bell hooks, born Gloria Watkins, is a Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New
York. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1952, hooks, received her B.A. from Stanford
University in 1973, her M.A. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. in 1983
from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Although hooks is mainly known as a feminist thinker, her writings cover a broad range of topics
on gender, race, teaching and the significance of media for contemporary culture. She strongly
believes that these topics cannot be dealt with as separately, but must be understood as being
interconnectedness. As an example, she refers to the idea of a "White Supremacist Capitalist
Patriarchy" and its interconnectedness, rather than to its more traditionally separated and
component parts.
A passionate scholar, hooks is among the leading public intellectuals of her generation.
hooks/Watson's use of a pseudonym is intended to honor both her grandmother (whose name she
took) and her mother, as well as provide her the opportunity to establish a separate voice from
the person Gloria Watson.
hooks, like Paulo Freire, sees education as the practice of freedom. Profoundly influenced by
Freire, she sees his ideas as affirming her "right as a subject in resistance to define reality."
(Teaching to Trangress , p. 53).
For hooks: "teaching is a performative act... that offers the space for change, invention,
spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the unique elements in each
classroom." (Ibid, p. 11)

Teaching to Transgress
Education as the Practice of Freedom
"The difference between education that practices freedom and the education that strives
to reinforce domination"
Paulo Freire and Feminism inspired her undergraduate and graduate work
This book is a collection of essays, each written with unique purpose but not to be taken
as a guide for a classroom.
Support from students, colleagues, professors, and people visiting her classroom are
included in the essays.

Engaged Pedagogy
Inspired by Paulo Freire and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Nhat Hanh believed in a holistic view to teaching: body, spirit and mind.
Engaged pedagogy is when the teacher is not a power figure and shares his/her
experience with the students.
"Professors who embrace the challenge of self actualiztion will be better able to create
pedagogical practices that engage students, providing them with ways of knowing that
enhance their capacity to live fully and deeply"

A Revolution of Values

reflection on how Ken and herself were able to fight of segregation in a society that
focused on it.
How MLK wanted a revolution of values or his work would be for nothing.
Quote pg27
People who want us to return to old times favor the domination through exploitation
mentally and physically.
Nationalism, isolationism, xenophobia. The tools of those who want to provide order in
chaos.
in order to teach an education of freedom we must free ourselves.
Society changes through the classroom.
Highlight pg33
Last paragraph pg33


Embracing Change

We must take into account the differences in our students, but not exploit those
differences.
We must give up the idea of teaching a classroom of "whiteness" and understand the
students "culture codes".
We must move away from immediate gratification from our students.
Conflict in a classroom can be good, it means your students have the liberty to express
themselves without feeling judged.

"We take your class. We learn to look at the world from a critical standpoint, one that
considers race, sex, and class. And we can't enjoy life anymore."

" and I saw for the first time thrash that can be, and usually is, some degree of pain
involved in giving up old ways of inning and knowing and learning new approaches"