Power: Dr. Jasmine Harris on bell hooks

Join Dr. Jasmine Harris for a public conversation inspired by the work and legacy of bell hooks. Harris will explore how hooks wrote about power, education, love, and belonging, and how her ideas can help us recognize the systems that shape our lives.

The discussion will connect hooks’ work to questions raised by Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, including how institutions protect themselves, how injustice becomes accepted as normal, and what resistance and accountability can look like. The program is not a direct comparison between the two writers. Instead, it uses the novel as a way into a larger conversation about human connection and the work of creating change.

The program will be moderated by Dr. Shanti Zaid and will include an audience Q&A. Books will be available for purchase from The Shop at MATTER.

This program is part of Witness, Power, Futures, a three-part series exploring themes in The Nickel Boys through the legacies of influential Black American writers and thinkers.

Presented in partnership with Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library and MATTER.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Jasmine Harris is professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her research and teaching focus on race, education, intersectionality, inequality, belonging, media, and the experiences of Black students and scholars in higher education. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, and other national publications. She earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of Minnesota.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Dr. Shanti Zaid produces public history programs at Denver Public Library’s Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, with a focus on the Black experience in the Rocky Mountain West. He has a background in university teaching and research on religions of the African Diaspora.