Patricia Hill Collins, a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park, has been selected to receive the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize from Brandeis University for outstanding scholarly contributions in the field of racial, ethnic, and religious relations. She will lecture and receive the award on the Brandeis campus in Waltham, Massachusetts, on October 29. A $25,000 cash prize accompanies the award.
Professor Collins holds bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees from Brandeis University and also holds a master’s degree in education from Harvard University. She is the former director of the African American Center at Tufts University and spent 20 years on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Collins is the author of the award-winning 1990 book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Her other books include Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (Routledge, 2004) and Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 1998).