Collins, Patricia Hill

Patricia Hill Collins (b. 1943), a sociologist and feminist theorist, is chair and Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Sociology in the Department of African American Studies and Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. She received her BA and PhD degrees in sociology from Brandeis University and an MAT degree from Harvard University. Collins has taught at several institutions, held editorial positions with professional journals, and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad. Her work examines issues of gender, race, social class, and nation, particularly relating to African American women.

Collins's best-known work, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990, 2000), theorizes a “black feminist epistemology” that draws on and extends the work of African American intellectuals such as Audre Lorde, bell ...