In this class, we will explore the Kentucky native, bell hooks and her scholarship on being, belonging, and becoming across social lines through contemplative practices. Hooks’ writings intersect issues of race, class, and gender with a focus on how these modalities reinforce domination and disrupts our common humanity. In 2014, she founded the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.

“Living by those values, living with integrity, I am able to return to my native place, to an Appalachia that is no longer silent about its diversity or about the broad sweep of its influence. While I do not claim an identity as Appalachian, I do claim a solidarity, a sense of belonging, that makes me one with the Appalachian past of my ancestors, black, Native American, white, all “people of one blood” who made home place in isolated landscapes where they could invent themselves, where they could savour a taste of freedom.” – bell hooks

As a writer, she chose the pseudonym, bell hooks, in tribute to her mother and great-grandmother. She decided not to capitalise her new name to place focus on her work rather than her name, on her ideas rather than her personality.

This class is delivered by Prince E. Johnson, II –  a Cincinnati native, a graduate from Xavier University and the University College London Institute of Education in London, UK and is currently a Phd student at Miami University’s Education and Leadership Program. Prince intersects contemplative practices with storytelling, critical pedagogy, and anti black racism as a means to foster a culture of belonging and being in the community.

Register here