What’s Love Got to do With it? Introducing bell hooksian Love Typologies to Qualitative Inquiry in Educational Research

Abstract

Many Black women scholars, like bell hooks, have been subjected to academic capitalist white supremacist patriarchal values that minimizes and invalidates the epistemologies, theories, methods, and knowledge production processes of Black women. Thus, as a means to move past antiquated theorization and knowledge production practices, I proposed a pathway forward by introducing a “bell hooksian approach” to higher educational research that is based on four “hooksian love typologies” (love as an active choice, revolutionary self-love, familial, and romantic) rooted in the scholarship of Black feminist theorist bell hooks. This framework helps to better understand and research the multifaceted conceptualizations of love that can assist and better support Black women and women of color on college campuses and in the academy more generally. Lastly, asserting that notions of love is a central aspect of Black life, I made recommendations for researchers and practitioners on how to utilize a love-centered hooksian approach within qualitative inquiry.

Amazingly, despite how easy it would have been or would be for black women to give up on love given the adversity we have had to confront on these shores, many of us have held our hope in love because we believe in love’s power to heal and renew, to reconcile, and transform.

– bell hooks

Black feminist theorist, bell hooks, ¹ was one of the most influential thought leaders of our time (Maniglia et al., 2022; Squires, 2022). Yet, like hooks, many Black women scholars have been subjected to academic ‘capitalist white ² supremacist patriarchal values’ (hooks, 1995) that minimizes and invalidates Black women’s epistemologies, theories, methods, and knowledge production processes. Notably, Black women have experienced multiple forms of oppression within society (Collective Combahee River, 1977/2014; Collins, 2000; Cooper, 1892/1988; hooks, 1981) – more specifically, within higher educational spaces (Commodore et al., 2018). While Black women scholars are not monolithic, many have encountered epistemic violence and oppression in the realm of theory creation, axiological traditions, and methodological and onto-epistemological validation (Collins, 2000). Current exemplars of this include the short-tenure and politically pressured resignation of President Dr. Claudine Gay at Harvard University, and Nikole Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur Grant and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, being denied tenure at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Carter & Craig, 2022; Schuessler et al., 2024). Like Dr. Gay and Hannah-Jones, a plethora of Black women scholars have been reduced to living in the shadows of their own theories and intellectual contributions. The knowledge contributions of Black women and other scholars of color and difference have often been erased from mainstream academic conversations, and this has been happening for more than a century (Collins, 2000; Cooper, 1892/1988). For instance, the leading educational organization, American Education Research Association (AERA), was created more than 100 years ago and has over 25,000 members but does not have a special interest group ³ that emphasizes women of color or Black women’s knowledge and theoretical contributions (AERA Membership, 2023). Yet, across the field of education, scholars have been using Black feminist theories and epistemologies within their scholarship to advance research centering Black life (Dillard, 2000; Evans-Winters, 2019; Jones & Wilder, 2013; Patton & Croom, 2017; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Porter et al., 2022; Reavis et al., 2022). Thus, there is a need to reconceptualize and further methodologically and theoretically engage the experiences, possibilities, intersectional identities, and relationality of Blackness in educational research. More specifically, due to eurocentric ideologies and white research logics (Wynter, 1994; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008), further theoretical and methodological explorations in qualitative inquiry should center the lived experiences and voices of Black women who occupy limited space within the United States higher education system.

There is a bevy of research that centers Black women in higher education (e.g., Commodore et al., 2018; Lee-Johnson, 2022; McLewis, 2021; Patton & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2009), and many scholars who have sculpted critical theories dedicated to examining Black women’s lives have been highly ignored within the academic canon (Cooper, 1892; Hull et al., 1982/2015; Porter et al., 2022; Welke, 1995). This could be attributed to eurocentric research processes that are steeped in inequities and influence the knowledge production of theories and methods that are published, adopted, and deemed “seminal” within the canon (Okello, 2023). The academy continues to be (Hobson, 2016) dominated by cis-gendered white heterosexual men, and many of those who have adopted their ideologies are the gatekeepers of knowledge and knowledge production and hugely influence who can, and cannot, be deemed scholarly or rigorous in academe (Luker, 2009). According to Luker (2009):

The studying of the social order is itself a social process, so how could the process of doing it not be surrounded by assumptions, fetishes, beliefs, and values that are not simply mirror reflections of objective reality, if there is such a thing?... Not only are our assumptions about the social world themselves socially influenced, but so are our assumptions about the best way to go about investigating the social world. (p. 31)

Akin to Bhattacharya’s (2017) and Wynter’s (1994) decrees that research processes can be dehumanizing, Luker (2009) affirmed that research has embedded ideological norms, traditions, and standards that on the surface appear impartial, yet still heavily influence how we come to know, understand, and theorize the social world (our epistemologies), and who can be viable research subjects within qualitative investigations. This is especially pertinent when it involves promoting and conducting research that investigates Black life, relationality, and emotionality (e.g., notions of love and affect).

In order to reconceptualize the possibilities of Blackness, joy, care, healing, and notions of love in empirical research, educational researchers and practitioners must wrestle with the realities that our current methodological and theoretical processes of academia are saturated in white ideological and patriarchal values and norms that continuously impedes on our ability to adequately research Black life and meaning (hooks, 1995; Okello, 2023; Wynter, 1994; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Therefore, as a means to move past antiquated theorization and research practices, I propose a pathway forward by introducing what I am referring to as a hooksian approach to educational research. Rooted in the prolific scholarship of bell hooks (1952–2021), a hooksian approach is conceptually based on four hooksian love typologies (love as an active choice, revolutionary self-love, familial love, and romantic love). Through this approach, I provide a discussion and recommendations for how a love-centered hooksian approach could be applied to theorizing, researching, and praxis that center the lives of Black women in higher educational settings. With love being a central aspect of Black life, this manuscript magnifies notions of love beyond white heteronormative romantic means that can be utilized when researching Black people in educational contexts. This is an important aspect to consider because according to hooks (2001a, 2001b, 2002), love is expansive and multifaceted, which is often overlooked when studying the lived experiences of Black people – more particularly Black women.

Introducing a Conceptual bell hooksian Approach

Black feminist theories and methodologies have contributed to analyzing and framing the lives of Black women. Some Black feminist examples are (but are not limited to) Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2000), Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1990), Outsider Within (Collins, 1986), Combahee River Collective (Collective Combahee River, 1977/2014), Misogynoir (Bailey & Trudy, 2018), Double Jeopardy (Beal, 2008), Crunk Feminism (Crunk Feminist Collective, 2014), Hip Hop Feminism (Morgan, 1999), Black Queer Feminism (Harris, 1996), Black Feminist–Womanist Storytelling (Baker-Bell, 2017), Sister Circle Methodology (Dorsey, 2000), Endarkened Feminism (Dillard, 2000), and Womanism (Walker, 1983/2004). Yet, Black women’s lives, experiences, and identities need to continually be reconceptualized as time changes and the world progresses. Alongside these other Black feminist theories and theorists, hooks was a prominent public intellectual and Black feminist scholar who wrote and theorized for nearly 45 years, publishing in widely-read trade presses (del Guadalupe Davidson & Yancy, 2009; Hanchard, 1996; Woodson, 2019). Here, I pulled from the vast literary works of bell hooks to look at notions of love rooted in Black feminism and how hooks’s understanding of these concepts could be used to theorize, research, analyze, and develop culturally relevant and responsive practices in qualitative research (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 2014).

The Essence of bell hooks

Since the moment I was introduced to hooks’s work, I was enamored with her writing. As a Black woman, I am acutely drawn to hooks’s scholarship because she blends ‘every day and formalized knowledge’ (Collins, 2000) that speaks to notions of love, care, spirituality, and healing within Black womanhood. This is unique within Black feminist theorization–especially her attention to love (e.g., platonic, romantic). As a broad interdisciplinary reader, hooks indulged in diverse literature, Christian and Buddhist teachings, and was heavily inspired and shaped by Paulo Freire’s (1970/1990) philosophies around the liberatory practices of oppressed populations. Some scholars (e.g., Jaramillo & McLaren, 2009) have also linked her ideas to align with indigenous ways of knowing and being because she constantly questioned the impact of colonialism and intentionally aimed to practice decolonization within her theorizing (hooks, 2001a, 2001b).

While hooks drew upon various literary backgrounds, theorists, and genres, she was adamant that her standpoint as a Black woman, raised in the Jim Crow southern Kentucky region of the U.S., was the primary lens from which she theorized from (hooks, 1981). Within her scholarship, she theorized about multiple concepts from personal relationships to university teaching practices, but specifically for this manuscript, I focus on her articulations of love. Therefore, this paper introduces an emerging theoretical and methodological hooksian approach that centers understandings of love rooted in Black feminism. Although other theorists have written about love and Black feminism in various forms (e.g., Dillard, 2000), a hooksian conceptual framework highlights hooks’s unique and collective understanding of these concepts and disrupts the racialized and gendered canonical traditions of theory creation within academia.

While influenced by her overall body of work, this hooksian approach is heavily undergirded by her three-book trilogy A Love Song to the Nation, which includes All About Love (2001a), Salvation (2001b), and Communion (2002), totaling over 700 pages. I used the above literature to curate her unique conceptualizations and typologies of love (both romantic and non-romantic) in and outside academic spaces, and how using a hooksian approach would initiate future praxis and research on Black women, emotions (i.e., love), and community. Particularly within our current divisive and polarizing political and social climates, it is important to revisit ideas around love and community because if we continue to let bigotry, capitalism, and white supremacy proliferate, then community, love, and solidarity will continue to crumble. Thus, a hooksian approach is significant because her unique Black feminist contributions provide an additional epistemological avenue for Black feminist theorizing, particularly around the role of affect/emotion, and love, in educational research.

Love as Defined by hooks

Black people throughout history have sought out joy, pleasure, and love within their everyday lives despite their experiences of enslavement and disenfranchisement (Camp, 2002). In hooks’s (2001b) scholarship, she called for us to come back to love. She often wrote about the role of emotionality and love within the human experience (Biana, 2021; hooks, 2001a). More precisely, hooks (2001b) wrote volumes of chapters and dedicated a book, Salvation: Black people and love, centering Black people and their conceptualizations, histories, quest, and dedications to love and being loving. For hooks (2001b), love was “a combination of care, knowledge, responsibility, respect, trust, and commitment” (p. XVIII). In other words, love was a multidimensional undertaking that included virtuous attributes, such as trust and responsibility. She did not believe that love was void of difficulties, but that it gave one strength to deal with the difficulties of life in a productive way. Recently, some scholars (e.g., Biana, 2021) have engaged with hooks’s love ethics, but blanketed her as a “feminist” whose positioning and understandings of love were devoid of race. While hooks talked about love as an ontological universal human undertaking, hooks wrote extensively about what it meant to engage with notions of love, rooted in the Black experience, from an intersectional Black feminist lens (hooks, 1981, 1984, 1989, 1994, 2001a, 2001b, 2002, 2007). According to hooks (2001b), most Black people come to foundationally understand love through religious teaching and church settings (e.g., Christianity). Though for hooks, love transcends a single faith tradition. Fusing underpinnings of love with spirituality, hooks (2001b) declared:

To love, we have to let go of fear and live faith-based lives. Living in faith means that we recognize, as our wise black female ancestors did, that we do have the power to decolonize our minds, invent ourselves, and dwell in the spirit of love that is our true destiny. (p. 112)

Choosing to not live in fear but to ‘live in faith,’ meant for hooks that Black women needed to tap into our ancestral knowledge to obtain the power to self-actualize, remove white supremacist ideologies from our minds, and decide to abide in the ‘spirit of love.’ This was a vastly different approach to some white feminist ideas of fear and victimization because it promulgated that Black women, through the ‘spirit of love,’ could have forms of agency. Love was central to hooks’s theorization of Blackness and ontology of Black being. She frequently addressed the role and meaning of love within contemporary Black life because it provided a road map for Black survival and self-determination as Black people progressed in the anti-racist struggle (hooks, 1994, 2001b). She stated, “to give ourselves [Black people] love, to love blackness is to restore the true meaning of freedom, hope, and possibility in all our lives” (hooks, 2001b, p. XXIV). However, in order to achieve this, hooks (2001a) declared that we must have a commitment to truth-telling, honesty, and openness because these are at the core of a love ethic. This is an agentic path of viewing oneself, and by choosing this path of truth-telling, love can be our hope and our salvation (hooks, 2001b). Ultimately, love is foundational to the human experience ⁴ and can liberate and save us in its purest form (Freire, 1970/1990; hooks, 2001b, 2002). For this reason, I primarily focus this manuscript on the various typologies of love hooks mentioned in her writings.

hooksian Love Typologies

In the section below, I list four hooksian love typologies that are ingrained in Black feminist ways of knowing and being, and they are as followed:

1. The first love typology, love as an active choice, details that love is not an abstract array of emotions, but that love is best displayed through intentionality and commitment to oneself and others.

2. The second love typology, love as revolutionary self-love, explains how self-love is essential to becoming a loving human, and that it’s a revolutionary act for Black women to be self-loving.

3. The third love typology, love as familial, illustrates how the love within family structures sculpts children’s understandings of love.

4. Lastly, the fourth love typology, love as romantic, describes the sexual and non-sexual romantic relationships that occur between partnerships and same-sex friendships.

It is important to note that this is not an exhaustive list and that these hooksian love typologies are in conversation with each other. Within her writing, hooks often talked about “loving” and “being” in overlapping and intersectional ways at times that were not always discretely bound to a singular typology. I describe each hooksian love typology below and offer exemplars of how these typologies might influence research, knowledge production, Black feminist theorizing, faculty-student relationships, and student affairs praxis. Please note, the examples provided below are by no means the only way those typologies could manifest or be implemented, but many of these examples could be transferable.

Love as an Active Choice

To love well should be a task within all meaningful relationships, not just romantic ones (hooks, 2001b, 2002). Moreover, when it came to love, hooks believed that love was ‘an active choice,’ and that our decision to extend love should be one of intentionality (del Guadalupe Davidson & Yancy, 2009; hooks, 2001a). Love as an active choice is distinctly exhibited through the everyday practices of Black women. Within a U.S. context, hooks (2001b) titles Black women as ‘love’s practitioners’ (p. 93) because historically Black women have persistently practiced notions of love within Black life – even when it was not advantageous for them to do so. Living in a culture that continually devalues Black women, she stated that we must work twice as hard to be loving (hooks, 2001b). Despite the common challenges of racism and sexism that U.S. Black women encounter, hooks credited that Black women have immovably chosen to be loving because love is powerfully healing and can bring about societal and interpersonal change (hooks, 2001b). Ultimately, this was a way for one to obtain and activate personal agency. Drawing from Freire’s (1970/1990) ideas connecting love and liberation, hooks proposed that if one bends to hate, one would never be free. However, if one bends the other way — toward love — there is a pathway to freedom.

The typology of love as an active choice can show up in a myriad of ways within higher educational settings. For instance, there is some Black feminist scholarship that outlines a fully different way to holistically mentor students by showing acts of love, care, and concern (Jones & Wilder, 2013). A practical example of this could be when a faculty member invites their graduate students over to their home and cooks a hot meal for them as a means to build community. By doing this, the faculty member is distributing acts of love through their active choice to provide essential needs (i.e., food) and community for students unrelated to their academic interest or performance. Another example of love as an active choice could be applicable when Black women student affairs professionals offer to pray with a student whom they know to observe a religious practice of prayer or give them a hug while crying in their office because they recently lost a family member. Within research, love as an active choice could be enacted during the data collection process when interacting with participants. When in the field, this could be illustrated through intentionally centering reciprocity with participants or the organizations that we study, and/or giving back to the participants/community through service, time, providing resources, or agreeing to assist the community in ways that are not attached to one’s study. These are examples of active choices that can be seen as loving because they come from a place of intentionality and care from faculty, student affairs practitioners, and researchers. It is imperative to emphasize that acts of love are not homogeneous and can look different depending on the student(s). In order to distribute acts of love, it is essential for one to build genuine relationships with students and be sensitive to the students’ needs so that you respond to their needs as best as you can. Yet, this should not come at the expense of taking care of oneself or self-sacrificing for the betterment of others – for this happens far too often to Black women in academia. Fundamentally, the choice to love is also a choice to connect with others while simultaneously finding new versions of ourselves in the process (hooks, 2001a).

Love as Revolutionary Self-Love

It is not easy to be self-loving, but loving ourselves and learning to be solitary is an important aspect of love (hooks, 2001a). However, hooks (2001a) insisted that self-love cannot solely flourish in isolation. She stated one of the best ways to learn how to be self-loving is to offer ourselves the type of love we desire to receive from others. Self-love, to hooks, was essential to the art of loving and she believed that the key to self-love was to have healthy self-esteem (hooks, 2001a, 2001b). Within a U.S. context, journeys of love and self-love for Black people have been sites of struggle, resistance, and self-acceptance (hooks, 2001a, 2001b). Further detailing the relationship between Black people and self-love, hooks (1992) expressed:

Collectively, black people and our allies in the struggle are empowered when we practice self-love as a revolutionary intervention that undermines practices of domination. Loving blackness as a political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates the conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life. (p. 20)

In other words, when Black people strive and practice self-love and care they are empowering themselves politically to fight against systems of oppression that aim to eradicate and devalue Black life. Therefore, it is important for Black people to axiologically ‘value themselves rightly,’ (hooks, 2001b, p. 70) and in order to do that, Black people must practice decolonization to achieve self-love and acceptance – especially Black women (hooks, 1981, 1984, 2001a, 2001b). Examples of this could look like Black people unlearning eurocentric beliefs around Black hair being labeled “good” if it is loose and curly, or “bad” if it is kinky and tightly curled, or Black women pushing back against tropes that typecast Black women as masculine and undesirable (Bailey & Trudy, 2018; Collins, 2000; White, 1985). Since the hatred for Black women is ever present and growing, it is arduous for Black women to develop positive self-esteem within a society that continuously represents us negatively (hooks, 2001b). The historic and pervasive negative images of Black women as Jezebels (whores) and Mammies (subservient mother figures), have been ingrained into the minds of Black women since girlhood (Collins, 2000; hooks, 2001b; White, 1985). Consequently, for Black women to build a healthy and loving self-esteem, they must participate in oppositional strategies that are positive and up-lifting (hooks, 2001b).

Additionally, hooks (2001b) believed expressions of self-love should also translate to how we take care of our bodies physically, nutritionally, and holistically. Explicitly for Black people, hooks (2001b) declared that “we must work hard to love our black bodies in a white supremacist patriarchal culture” (p. 89). Choosing to intentionally love ourselves and our physical bodies within a white-dominated culture is an act of resistance that Black people, more pointedly Black women, must engage in. Mirroring other Black feminist declarations of self-love and care (e.g., Baker-Bell, 2017; Lorde, 2017) hooks believed that practicing self-love was more than just loving our bodies and the way we look (hooks, 2001b). She vehemently asserted that when women choose to love our bodies and our whole beings despite societal expectations and eurocentric beauty standards, we are able to set boundaries, to make better choices that best serve our well-being and enhance the well-being of those with whom we choose to share sexual pleasure (hooks, 2002). Alternatively, self-love for our bodies could also be practiced through abstaining from sexual pleasure with others and finding liberation from dissatisfying, selfish, and inconsistent sexual partners (hooks, 2002).

The typology of love as revolutionary self-love could be displayed within higher educational settings by inclusive pedagogy, programming, and research processes. For instance, a professor could teach on the racist and sexist plights of U.S. Black womanhood alongside the hope, joy, and love embedded within Black women’s experiences. Teaching about how Black women managed to actively seek out avenues and counterspaces to defy conventional beauty standards also speaks to the multilayered experiences of Black women. These topics could also be discussed within multicultural centers and Black student cultural centers at predominantly white campuses (Patton, 2006), or directors of these centers could deliberately select artwork that celebrates Black women’s bodies and Black joy (Tichavakunda, 2021). Granted the practice of self-love and self-acceptance is an ongoing effort, faculty and university administrators could strategically curate syllabi and cultural spaces that reify Black life and self-love to help remedy the salient negative images of U.S. Black people. Within the research process, this could look two-fold: (1) inquiries about self-love within qualitative interview protocols (Okello & Calhoun, 2024); and (2) researcher self-love and care. First, when conducting research with Black women participants, researchers could include questions within their interview protocols that focus on the various ways participants approach self-love and joy in the face of oppressive systems and social realities. Secondly, from the standpoint of the researcher, this could be illustrated in how the researcher is intentional about caring for themselves while in the field during the data collection process. Particularly in qualitative research approaches, the researcher is often heavily engulfed in data collection by conducting multiple interviews, taking field notes, and journaling amongst other non-academic personal and familial obligations. At times, if the researcher is not properly taking care of their mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical needs, they can become overwhelmed and sometimes physically sick and unwell. Hence, as an act of self-care and self-love, researchers (especially researchers of color) should prioritize their holistic well-being when conducting their research projects. Concluding on the idea of revolutionary self-love, hooks (2001a) proclaimed that when women choose to love themselves (in non-narcissistic or selfish ways) (Lorde, 2017), we are better able to love those around us – including family members.

Love as Familial

According to hooks (2001b), all relationships can flourish when there is a sustained commitment to being loving. This is especially true within familial relationships. It is during childhood where we learn what it means to be loving because it is our “original school of love,” (hooks, 2001a). Whether or not our childhood homes were functional and supportive or dysfunctional and chaotic, our parents or legal guardians played a major part in how we expect loving actions from others (hooks, 2001a, 2001b). When it comes to Black life, most Black people will state that they first came to understand love in their lives through the love of a Black woman (e.g., mother figure, grandmother, aunt, sister) (hooks, 2001b). During her lifetime hooks never gave birth to any biological children, but she believed that it was parents’ duty to be loving to children and to teach them how to be loving to others (2001b). Also, hooks (2001b) advocated for children to not be treated as ‘property,’ but as human beings that have rights that should also be respected and honored. A failure to do this results in a system of domination, and hooks (2000, 2001b) argued that love in the face of domination will always be unjust.

Additionally, hooks (2001b) talked about how we have a ‘crisis of lovelessness’ (p. XVIII) in our current society and we need to courageously cultivate love so that our children can live well and be whole. Contrary to mainstream opinions, she believed that we have the ability to create love and a loving environment wherever we are, including within nontraditional family structures. On the idea of family and the feminist movement, hooks (2000) stated:

In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movements we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love. (p. 77)

Progressively, hooks deemed that family dynamics for children that were not steeped in domination and sexism, but instead were saturated with love, high self-esteem, and safety (both physical and emotional) were ideal feminist visions of familial love. Although hooks spoke about familial structures in gendered binaries, she held a more expansive view of how loving families could be arranged.

Unlike the other typologies, love as familial is a bit more nuanced in its applications within educational settings. Meaning, that when students arrive their first day of campus, they bring their familial histories, understandings of love, and norms with them. Consequently, when faculty or student affairs professionals engage with students, students’ reception or rejection to loving acts are influenced by how they first came to understand love in their childhood with their parents or caretakers. To dive into students’ perceptions of love and being loving, it benefits faculty and non-academic staff to be comfortable asking about student family histories to get a better sense of what kind of environment students were brought up in. Familial love could also be displayed through non-biological kinship bonds that are formed on campus between faculty and staff that assume parental figure roles for students. This could hold especially true for Black students who are away from immediate family members and are in need of ‘othermothering’ (McCallum, 2020) or guidance to survive college life.

Within a research context, familial love can be implemented methodologically. For instance, when designing a study that involves Black women participants, the researcher could include “sista/er circles” as a method to obtain data through the collective dialogue and sister-like familial settings (Brown et al., 2021; Croom et al., 2017; Davis & Peters, 2022; Palmer, 2021). Sista/er circles are composed of a group of Black women (including the researcher) who participate in a dialogical ‘sista to sista’ conversation and treat others within the circle like biological sisters although they are not related (Dorsey, 2000; Dunmeyer et al., 2023). This type of familial love, whether biological or honorary, is important to hooks’ conceptions of love within her work because it is foundational to how one comes to develop various types of love in their life, including romantic love.

Love as Romantic (Romantic Partnerships and Same-Sex Friendships)

Romantic love was significant to hooks. She invested a fair amount of her intellectual real estate writing about the intimate private relationships of women and the importance romance played in women’s lives, including her own (hooks, 2001a, 2002). With respect to loving relationships, hooks believed that women should curate “circles of love” (2002, p. 214) that could include both romantic partners, friendships, and loved ones. An advocate of loving relationships, hooks saw the beauty of engaging in deep levels of love outside of oneself. She was a critic of love, but she was not skeptical of the joy it could bring. For instance, hooks (2001a) expressed:

Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives (p. 179).

For hooks, true love was possible, and she promoted that we should all know romantic love if that is what one desired.

Romantic Loving Partnership

According to hooks (2001a), love is a pleasant endeavor, but love is not safe or guaranteed because we always run the risk of being hurt or losing love all together. This holds especially true for romantic relationships. Stemming from the imagination of racist individuals, for centuries there was a disparaging belief that enslaved Africans and their descendants were incapable of having and expressing deep feelings and refined emotions like love (hooks, 2001b). These racist ideologies were refuted in both word and deed in part to the Black romantic love that was displayed during enslavement and the post-civil war era. The quest and obtainment of Black romance have been, and continue to be, an important aspect of Black life. Hence, hooks (2002) stated that, “women should not feel no shame in longing for a loving partner and need to be surrounded and supported by the loved ones in our lives” (p. 155). Particularly hooks noted the dismissal of shame and longing for love, because some feminist believed that women should not desire these things, but hooks did not align with that way of thinking. Contrarily, hooks (2002) also wrote about how finding a man was not the equivalent to finding love, and that if a woman wanted a loving relationship with a man in a heteronormative context, they must be clear about these loving requests. If these loving requests are granted, it can be an immeasurable pleasure to have a lasting loving partner who is willing to grow with you and generously give you love and attention (hooks, 2001b).

Sadly, loving and healthy romantic relationships within a historically marginalized community are not always easy to come by (Crenshaw, 1990). In some romantic relationships, women often find themselves, “endur[ing] unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. [Yet, w]hen we love rightly, we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way” (hooks, 2001a, p. 137). For hooks (2002), both romantic partners have to be willing to create love and emotional connections, if not domination and power will erode love slowly but surely. When hooks (2001b) inquired of Black men (of various ages) if they desired to receive love in their lives, they claimed they wanted to receive love, but they did not mention if they knew how to reciprocate it. Consequently, because of this reciprocal imbalance of love in heterosexual relationships, some women are choosing alternative romantic partnerships.

Some Black women select to embrace romantic partnerships with non-black men (hooks, 2001b). From a cross-racial vantage point, hooks addressed interracial dating and observed that she rarely heard people talk about white men loving other Black women (hooks, 2001b). The absence of these conversations could be for a plethora of reasons (e.g., eurocentric desirability politics). Nonetheless, it adds to the social realities that decrease the likelihood of Black women finding suitable male partners to build loving relationships with. Notably, not all women who are searching for loving relationships are looking for men as their romantic partners (hooks, 2002). Pushing back against the hegemonic assumptions that Black women’s love interests are exclusively heteronormative, hooks noted that same-sex loving relationships have always existed and that women should not be restricted by gender when it comes to choosing who they desire to have a romantic and sexual relationship with. Careful not to over-romanticize lesbian or same-sex love, hooks (2002) details how many women can find intimate deep connections with other women that they were never able to establish with their male partners.

The love as romance typology, centering romantic partnerships, could be utilized to research and support the intimate lives of Black students in college. For example, a scholar could research student relationships and how their loving partnerships align, nuances, or diverges from a hooksian approach to romantic love. Additionally, student affairs professionals could create programming that centers loving romantic relationships and conduct workshops dedicated to teaching students how to engage in healthy partnerships while in college and post-graduation.

Romantic Platonic Friendships

Deep romantic bonds can be sexual in nature, or they can also be exercised through platonic non-sexual same-sex friendships. In her scholarship, hooks contributed a unique conceptualization of same-sex friendships and how romance can take place within these relationships. For hooks (2001b, 2002) romantic love did not automatically include a sexual element, but rather it involved deep notions of love with romantic aspects embedded within the friendship such as: committing to each other, living together, writing loving letters, hugs, warm embraces, and intentional bonding. Within her work, hooks (2002) argued that there are deep loving relationships that do not require sexual intercourse and that these types of romantic relationships are a threat to heterosexist patriarchal ideas. To hooks (2002), “romantic friendships differ from other forms of friendship precisely because the parties involved acknowledge both that there is an erotic dimension to their passionate bond and that it acts as an energetic force, enhancing and deepening ties” (p. 208). Meaning that a romantic friendship can include heightened levels of intense passion and deepened emotional ties than your typical relationship. Simply put, some people have romantic friendships, but not all friendships are considered romantic. What is beautiful about these types of relationships is that it provides women the joys of being in relationships where we are given the space and grace to learn and process our issues, and cope with our differences and conflicts while remaining connected to other women (hooks, 2001a).

The blockages to women being in loving friendships are a result of sexist thinking that aims to keep women from real solidarity (hooks, 2002). It is only when we choose to reject the negative things we have been taught about other women, and breaking down the false barriers, then we can begin to cultivate true sisterhood and strong ties of everlasting love (hooks, 2002). As stated by hooks (2002), “deep abiding friendships are the place where many women know lasting love” (p. 205). Therefore, women should aim to seek, nurture, and maintain romantic and loving friendships because it may be the greatest form of love they will ever experience. Overall, hooks (2002) asserted that love should come from multiple sources (i.e., romantic partners, friendships, family) and promoted women to curate ‘circles of love’ in their lives in order to achieve this (p. 214).

Scholars could use this hooksian love as romance typology, centering romantic friendships to research the characteristics of Black women’s friendships on campus and how non-sexual romantic bonds are expressed through and within those friendships. Additionally, both faculty and student affairs professionals, within their mentoring and praxis, could emphasize the need for Black women students to cultivate strong sisterhood ties or romantic friendships with other women on campus to promote avenues for love and connection. Additionally, student affairs practitioners could host workshops to help students develop and curate their own ‘circles of love’ (hooks, 2002) on and off campus to help sustain them while they are in college.

Discussion and Implications

In, All About Love, hooks (2001a) cried out for us to ‘return to love,’ because having true loving relationships (both romantic partnerships and friendships) has the power and ability to redeem us if we are ready to receive it. Although love is not forceful, it only has the power to save us if we desire to be saved. Love’s salvation is especially pertinent for those who possess Black bodies and identify as Black women. Hence, these hooksian love typologies rooted in Black feminist ways of knowing and being, while not exhaustive, can be used to theorize, research, mentor, and support Black women students and academics.

While some progress has been made, Black women academics continue to face adversity within academia (Porter et al., 2022). One form of institutional oppression Black women academics have faced is in the realm of theory creation and methodological and epistemological validation. According to Okello (2023), “white institutions and frameworks do not have the epistemological capacity to account for and meditate on the fullness of Black existence” (p. 31). Okello’s assertions to explore the ‘fullness’ of Black life show that there is still work that needs to be done to help better articulate Black life within research. This holds true even with the current theoretical and methodological considerations available to investigate the lives of Black women. However, this is not a result of previous Black feminist approaches being insufficient. Prominent theories like Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2000), Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), and Misogynoir (Bailey & Trudy, 2018) assist in highlighting the intersectional gendered and racialized experiences of Black women–and are still relevant and needed. Yet, we do not currently have a theoretical framework to help analyze the ways in which notions of love show up in educational spaces for Black people, and how love (expanding beyond mere romantic love) can be researched within Black living. However, a hooksian approach grants researchers an additional theoretical, methodological, and analytic tool to help capture the multifaceted ways in which love manifests in Black life, more specifically in the lives of Black women.

The four hooksian love typologies presented above (e.g., love as an active choice; love as revolutionary self-love; love as familial; and love as romantic) are unique to Black feminist theorizing within the canon because hooks wrote extensively about love in more capacious and multidimensional ways that were relevant to the human experience. Particularly her theorizations of love also speak to aspects of Black life, care, and relationality. Aligning with how some educational scholars are writing about Black joy, hope, spirituality, refusal, poetry, anti-blackness, and the (re)membering of the self into literary existence (Dillard, 2000; Henry Jr. et al., 2023; Jackson et al., 2022; Jenkins, 2021; Okello & Morton, 2022; Tichavakunda, 2021), these hooksian love typologies also serve as a way to write, research, theorize, and practice notions of love that center Black bodies within educational spaces. Distinctively for Black women, these hooksian love typologies can reshape the way we epistemologically think about relationality and the role of emotions/feelings in studies with and about Black women in academic settings.

When engaging in praxis with Black women students in academia, student affairs practitioners, administrators, and faculty can use a hooksian approach to construct student programming and course syllabi to better support the holistic, emotional, relational, and personal wellness of Black women. I recommend that practitioners and faculty (of all professional ranks), irrespective of race, gender, and sexual orientation, strive to be more culturally competent and informed about the various ways to view Black women’s complex existence outside of mere salient oppressive tropes. Lastly, I recommend for scholars to center and generously cite Black women academics and consider how to incorporate aspects of Black feminism and hooksian approaches in their own scholarship and praxis.

With regards to theory, Black women within contemporary society are embarking upon civil and political upheaval that directly targets and threatens their agency and quality of life (e.g., the overturning of Roe v. Wade). Tethered to this social unraveling, Black women, their beauty, natural hair, health issues, and well-being are also being more embraced, elevated, and are spotlighted through social media and within corporate campaigns. While portions of these efforts to elevate Black women are performative and monetarily exploitative, Black women of all shades and body types are showing their needs to be centered and their desires to be seen, known, protected, and loved. Previous theories have spoken to Black women’s pejorative racial tropes (e.g., Collins, 2000; White, 1985) and their ability to be ‘superwomen’ who persevere despite societal odds (Woods-Giscombe’, 2010). Yet, using a hooksian approach allows for scholars to think about the emotional and romantic lives and relationships of Black women in education and how to design and conduct research studies to highlight their complex existence centering love, community, and relationships. Additionally, there is a need for further theoretical engagement with bell hooks scholarship around healing, class, pedagogy, and spirituality that could be compiled into a conceptual framework to frame future empirical research studies. Lastly, across disciplines such as the social sciences and humanities, researchers who produce scholarship surrounding aspects of the social world can employ a hooksian approach to theorize and analyze how love (and actions of love) manifest within the various areas of Black life.

For future research, I recommend scholars to think epistemologically and methodologically about the potential ways to better document and capture Blackness and Black women’s lives and how they express and experience love, care, and relationality within educational contexts. For example, qualitative and mixed-methods researchers can intentionally inquire about the ways love shows up in participants’ lives and how they might be incorporating practices of self-love as Black women. Highlighting various types of love in Black women’s lives can unveil the role of oppression, racism, and sexism, but also agency (hooks, 2001a) and how they are finding joy, community, and hope amidst their social realities. When using a hooksian approach to conduct research, it should be rooted in love, care, and liberation, and can heterogeneously be applied depending on the research context. Future research is needed to empirically explore these hooksian love typologies in Black women students, faculty, and student affairs practitioners in historically and majority white campuses, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Within these different institutional types, notions of love and healing could show up in similar or divergent ways that could suggest different understandings about collegiate student support, belongingness, and success.

Additionally, while a lot of these research recommendations could be more seamlessly transferable to future qualitative studies, these expanded notions of love and hooksian typologies could also be applied within quantitative models. Some quantitative scholars have called for new ways to think about and do quantitative methods in ways that decenter whiteness (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Thus, these hooksian love typologies could assist in decentering whiteness in qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, and multi-methods research, help scholars to think carefully about their research designs, and to seriously consider the role of love in educational research and how they think and apply these ideas within their studies. In any case, regardless of methodology, using a hooksian approach should deeply influence how you report your research findings. A considerable level of care, thought, attention, and love should go into how one decides to report their findings. Some questions to consider when reporting and sharing findings are: What stories should I share or not share? How should I write about and describe participants? Which hooksian typologies are present/absent within my data? How does love, if at all, show up in the data and how do I account for it in my findings and analysis?

In closing, the late bell hooks has touched multitudes of lives all around the world, and her scholarship and legacy continues to transform the lives of those who aim to see the world more clearly, more critically, and more lovingly. Choosing to call myself a hooksian scholar and proposing a conceptual hooksian approach is not simply about nomenclatures or semantics, but it is about disrupting the taken-for-granted academic traditions that undermine Black and other historically marginalized scholars’ intellectual contributions, and at its core – our very human existence. In our current social state, which continues to question the humanity of Black people, love is the last thing on many people’s minds and political and research agendas. Nevertheless, centering critical theories by Black women theorists, like bell hooks, provides new investigations of power and oppression of knowledge production within academia, but also agency, love, and possibilities for liberatory futures. According to hooks (2001a), love in its purest form still remains one of the greatest human endeavors. Thus, this manuscript urges scholars to re-evaluate how we conceptualize love, Black living, and knowledge production possibilities that center Black life and Black women in educational spaces. So, for those of us who research and practice at the nexus of education and Blackness, we must courageously push back against dehumanizing research processes and attune to robust notions of love and care that accompany the beautiful and abundant aspects of Black life, especially in educational research.