The bell hooks center is a feminist hub for scholarship, activism and radical inclusion. Across campus, Bereans are now thinking and living gender beyond a binary. To meet their needs, the College opened its Women’s and Gender Non-Conforming Center in 2019, giving birth to what is now the bell hooks center. In addition to the variety of programming sponsored and housed in it, the bell hooks center offers all students, including but not limited to marginalized students, a space to be as they are, outside of the social scripts that circumscribe their living.

The bell hooks center’s newly renovated space in Draper 106 is accessible and size inclusive. Described by students as the campus’ “living room,” all are welcome in the center, which is furnished comfortably (and beautifully) with couches, study spaces, reading nooks, and floor furniture. We offer wool blankets and encourage students to indulge in a necessary practice of survival: rest. Our resources include pronoun pins, contraceptive and menstrual products, and a community closet. Additionally, the center houses a feminist library with books students can take home to keep, some they can check out, and resource materials that they can read in-house, including signed copies of bell hooks’ books. The center’s walls are adorned with original, commissioned art and a multimedia display of the past, present, and future of Berea College’s Sixth Great Commitment; the evolution of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department; and bell hooks’ life, love, and legacy—in Berea, in Appalachia, and in the world.