On Wednesday, September 22, 2021, the bell hooks center formally launched with opening remarks from President Lyle Roelofs, Associate Provost Eileen McKiernan González, and the center’s Inaugural Director, M. Shadee Malaklou. Their remarks were followed by a Gender Talk featuring black feminist icon Beverly Guy-Sheftall. In her talk, Guy-Sheftall reflects on her personal and intellectual comradeship with bell hooks—whom she describes as a feminist critic, theorist, writer, professor, dissident, activist, and revolutionary. Her remarks capture the urgency of hooks’s rebellious teachings around race and gender equity and her decades-long impact on the academy and women’s movements.

Established in Fall 2019 as the Women’s and Gender Non-Conforming Center, Berea College hoped to create an inclusive space where historically underrepresented students could come to be as they are, outside of the social scripts that circumscribe and discipline their living. Now, as the bell hooks center, we continue this work.

Watch the recording of Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s Gender Talk, entitled “Loving bell hooks,” below.