Patricia Hill Collins
The Life
The Life of Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins was born May 1, 1948 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the only child born unto her mother Eunice Hill and father Albert Hill. Her father was a veteran who had me her mother in Washington, DC. Patricia was born during the time of World War II, so it affected her family's lifestyle dramatically. She had once said that "Beginning in adolescence, I was increasingly the "first," "one of the few," or the "only" African American and/or woman and/or working class person in my schools, communities, and work settings. I saw nothing wrong with being who I was, but apparently many others did. My world grew larger, but I felt I was growing smaller. I tried to disappear into myself …show more content…
Her passion for transgressing academic and intellectual boundaries shines through in all of her scholarship, which merges seamlessly and in important, innovative ways, the epistemologies of sociology, women and feminist studies, and black studies.
Major Works
In 1986, Collins published her groundbreaking article, “Learning from the Outsider Within,” in Social Problems. Reflecting feminist concerns about how social problems and their solutions are framed, and which are even recognized and studied when the production of scholarship is limited to such a small sector of the population, Collins offered a scathing critique of the experiences of women of color in academia.
This piece set the stage for her first book, and the rest of her career. She argued that black women are uniquely positioned, due to their race and gender, to understand the importance of self-definition within the context of a social system that defines oneself in oppressive ways, and that they are also uniquely positioned, because of their experiences within the social system, to engage in social justice …show more content…
The intersection of power with knowledge, and how oppression is connected to the marginalization and invalidation of the knowledge of the many by the power of the few, are central principles of her scholarship. Instead, she advocates for scholars to engage in critical self-reflection about their own processes of knowledge formation, what they consider valid or invalid knowledge, and to make their own positionality clear in their
The Life of Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins was born May 1, 1948 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the only child born unto her mother Eunice Hill and father Albert Hill. Her father was a veteran who had me her mother in Washington, DC. Patricia was born during the time of World War II, so it affected her family's lifestyle dramatically. She had once said that "Beginning in adolescence, I was increasingly the "first," "one of the few," or the "only" African American and/or woman and/or working class person in my schools, communities, and work settings. I saw nothing wrong with being who I was, but apparently many others did. My world grew larger, but I felt I was growing smaller. I tried to disappear into myself …show more content…
Her passion for transgressing academic and intellectual boundaries shines through in all of her scholarship, which merges seamlessly and in important, innovative ways, the epistemologies of sociology, women and feminist studies, and black studies.
Major Works
In 1986, Collins published her groundbreaking article, “Learning from the Outsider Within,” in Social Problems. Reflecting feminist concerns about how social problems and their solutions are framed, and which are even recognized and studied when the production of scholarship is limited to such a small sector of the population, Collins offered a scathing critique of the experiences of women of color in academia.
This piece set the stage for her first book, and the rest of her career. She argued that black women are uniquely positioned, due to their race and gender, to understand the importance of self-definition within the context of a social system that defines oneself in oppressive ways, and that they are also uniquely positioned, because of their experiences within the social system, to engage in social justice …show more content…
The intersection of power with knowledge, and how oppression is connected to the marginalization and invalidation of the knowledge of the many by the power of the few, are central principles of her scholarship. Instead, she advocates for scholars to engage in critical self-reflection about their own processes of knowledge formation, what they consider valid or invalid knowledge, and to make their own positionality clear in their