Uncut Funk

bell hooks (1952-2021) was an influential cultural critic, educator, and writer. Celebrated as one of America’s leading public intellectuals, she was a charismatic speaker and writer who taught and lectured around the world. Her unique pseudonym honors her great-grandmother, a brilliant and strong-willed Black woman who inspired her commitment to resistance and freedom. hooks was the author of more than 40 books, including the New York Times bestsellers All About Love and Communion in the landmark Love Song to the Nation trilogy, as well as the memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood and the poetry collection Appalachian Elegy.

Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica and educated at Oxford University. A pioneering cultural theorist, campaigner, and founding editor of the New Left Review, Hall was one of the most influential and adventurous thinkers of the last half century. He was Director of the University of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from 1972, and from 1979 was Professor of Sociology at the Open University. His published work includes The Popular Arts (1964), the co-authored volume Policing the Crisis (1978), The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (1988), and his posthumous memoir Familiar Stranger (2017).