Arcadia University President Carl (Tobey) Oxholm III has announced that Patricia Hill Collins, a social theorist whose research and scholarship examine issues of race, gender, social class, sexuality and nation, will receive an Honorary Doctorate degree and give the Graduate Commencement Address at 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 17.

Collins is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland. Her first book, “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment,” published in 1990 and revised in 2000, won the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) for significant scholarship in gender, and the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her second book, “Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,” 8th ed. (2013), edited with Margaret Andersen, is widely used in undergraduate classrooms.

“Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism” (Routledge, 2004) received ASA’s 2007 Distinguished Publication Award.

Her other books include “Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice” (University of Minnesota Press, 1998); “From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism” (Temple University Press, 2006); and “Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media and Democratic Possibilities” (Beacon, 2009). She has published many articles in professional journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Signs, Sociological Theory, Social Problems, and Black Scholar, as well as in edited volumes.

Her latest book, “On Intellectual Activism,” will be released by Temple University Press in fall 2012.

Professor Collins has taught at several institutions, held editorial positions with professional journals, lectured widely in the United States and abroad, served in many capacities in professional organizations and has acted as consultant for a number of businesses and community organizations.

In 2008, she became the 100th president of the American Sociological Association, and she is the Charles Phelps Taft Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University.