{"id":267,"date":"2022-05-26T14:00:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T18:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.berea.edu\/bhc\/?page_id=267"},"modified":"2023-03-01T16:49:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T21:49:33","slug":"symposium","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/legacy.berea.edu\/bhc\/symposium\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 bell hooks center Symposium"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”342″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1653587921210{background-color: #fff1db !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Travel Grants Update<\/strong><\/p>\n

We received a large number of requests for travel grants. Due to limited funding, we have prioritized students, contingent faculty, independent\/unaffiliated scholars, as well as artists, organizers and activists. Travel grant awardees receiving an award will be notified via email by Friday, March 3rd, 2023.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Sponsored by the bell hooks center and the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Berea College<\/em><\/p>\n

June 16th-18th, 2023
\nBerea College
\nBerea, KY<\/p>\n

bell hooks\u2019 life and works engage in feminist thought and action that disrupt hegemonic systems of domination, including the cultural norms that hold these systems in place. She calls this dissident feminism a \u201ctalking back,\u201d a \u201cmoving from silence into speech,\u201d a \u201cstand[ing] and struggl[ing] side by side [as] a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible\u201d (Talking Back<\/em> 9). Her writings envision feminist theory and praxis as transformational politics and movement\u2013one that demands the provocation and audacity that hooks also represented in her person. Beverly GuySheftall describes the oppositional voice of bell hooks as \u201cloud and unrelenting\u201d in her keynote address for the bell hooks center launch in September 2021. Indeed, hooks\u2019 radical thought and action reimagine feminism as a sociopolitical movement that is \u201cfundamentally anti-racist,\u201d which \u201chas no gender,\u201d and which \u201cis for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

hooks\u2019 naming of \u201cimperialist white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy,\u201d which she later, in conversation with Laverne Cox, revised as \u201cimperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy,\u201d pointedly critiques the politics of domination that govern this world. hooks\u2019 ordinary upbringing as a young Black girl in Appalachia, specifically, in the \u201cKentucky backwoods,\u201d grounds her critique in space and place. It animates her radical interventions and deep commitment to liberatory world-making. While maintaining the connection between a love ethic and critical consciousness, hooks calls on us to cultivate visionary spaces, beloved communities, outlaw cultures, and radical undercommons in which oppositional worldviews are rooted in the experiential.<\/p>\n

In honor and celebration of her life, works, and legacy, the Inaugural bell hooks Symposium at the bell hooks center at Berea College holds collective space for continued engagement with dissident feminisms. This symposium encourages theory, praxis, poetics, and aesthetics that move hooks\u2019 interventions into the present moment while challenging the co-optation and de-politicization of her work.<\/p>\n

We invite proposals from activists, scholars, artists, community organizers, and public intellectuals engaged in thought, action, and cultural production that attends but is not limited to the following:<\/p>\n