Brittney Cooper

Cooper is from Ruston, Louisiana.[1]

She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Political Science from Howard University in May 2002.[1][3] She graduated summa cum laude, was involved in Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated from Howard's honors program with her senior thesis in English.[3]

After graduating from Howard University, Cooper attended Emory University, where she received her Master of Arts from the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts in December 2007.[3] She received her Ph.D. in American Studies, in addition to a Women's Studies Certificate, from Emory's Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts in May 2009.[1][3]

Cooper currently works as an associate professor of women's and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.[1][4] She is a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective and co-editor of the collection of essays of the same title, which explore intersectionality, African-American culture, and hip-hop feminism.[5][6]

She has also served as an assistant professor at the University of Alabama in the Department of Gender and Race Studies from 2009 to 2012, and she was a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University's Center for Race and Ethnicity from 2011 to 2012.[3]

In 2016, Cooper gave a TED talk called "The Racial Politics of Time."[7]

Cooper has written several books.

Her first book was Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, published in 2017 by University of Illinois Press. A book review from National Public Radio (NPR) called Beyond Respectability "a work of crucial cultural study."[8]

Cooper also co-authored and edited The Crunk Feminist Collection (published in 2017 by The Feminist Press at City University of New York) along with Susana M. Morris and Robin M. Boylorn.[9] The book collection received positive acclaim from Publishers Weekly,[10] Kirkus Reviews,[11] Literary Hub,[12] and Ebony.[13] The collection is a series of essays that originated on the blog The Crunk Feminist Collective, which Cooper co-founded.[14]

In 2018, her book Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower was published by St. Martin's Press.[9] In it, Cooper explores black feminism and anger, specifically the anger of black women, as a basis for revolutionary action.[4]

Cooper also writes articles for Cosmopolitan[15] and Salon.[16]