Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (Paperback-2022)

About the Book

In the first major update to this classic book in many years, Collins traces the history and contours of Black women’s ideas and actions to argue that Black feminist thought is the discourse that fosters Black women’s survival, persistence, and success against the odds. Through meticulous research that synthesizes the important intellectual work done by Black women, Collins’s timely update demonstrates that Black women’s ideas and actions are not marginal concerns but rather are central to the future of social justice within democratic societies.

The combination of the text’s classic arguments and a preface and epilogue written expressly for this edition speak to people who have long been working on social justice and to a new generation of readers who are encountering the ideas and actions of Black women for the first time.

For this 30th year anniversary edition, Patricia Hill Collins examines how the ideas in this classic text speak to contemporary social issues and identifies the directions needed for the future of Black feminist thought.

About the Author

Patricia Hill Collins is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park and Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emerita of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of ten books, including her award-winning books Black Feminist Thought (1990, 2000) and Black Sexual Politics (2004), as well as her co-authored volume Intersectionality (2016, 2020), and Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (2019). Dr. Collins has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, Brazil, and internationally. Dr. Collins has served in many capacities in community and professional organizations, including as the 2009 President of the American Sociological Association (ASA), the first African-American woman elected to this position in the organization’s 104-year history. Dr. Collins has won numerous professional awards, among them the William E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from ASA (2017), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Black Sociologists (2018), the Alumni Award from Brandeis University (2021), and the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service for 2021 for sociology.