Kim F. Hall

Kim F. Hall is the Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University where she teaches Black Women’s Studies, English Renaissance Literature, Critical Race Theory, and Food Studies. She is the author of Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Othello: Texts and Contexts, and The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Gender and Material Culture in Seventeenth Century England (under contract with UPenn Press). In 2016, Diverse Issues in Higher Education named her one of “25 Women Making a Difference in Higher Education and Beyond” and Barnard College gave her the Tow Award for Pedagogical Innovation.

She inherited a love of fabrics from her mother, who always had a side business as a couture seamstress, although she made her first quilt with her paternal grandmother, Drusilla Hall, more than forty years ago. Since then, quilting has been her primary creative outlet. It has sustained her through health issues, family losses, and the perils of being a black woman in academia. Quilting has also helped her discover communities of talented and welcoming women whenever she finds herself in a new location. She loves bright, bold fabrics and likes to try out new techniques with textiles she has collected from around the world. Her quilts have been on display in Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Massachusetts. She was chosen “Quilter of the Month” at the Seminole Sampler Quilt shop in Baltimore and her quilt “Duafe” was chosen for the juried show, “Quilts of the Mid-Atlantic” at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. She is a member of the Quilters of Color Network of New York and the African American Quilt Circle of Durham.

Photo Credit: Barnard College