Brittney C. Cooper

Brittney Cooper is an American academic author, activist, and cultural critic. She is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and Africana studies, and the principal investigator and founding director of the Race and Gender Equity Lab at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

Biography Cooper is from Ruston, Louisiana. She is currently a professor of women's and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and the principal investigator and founding director of the Race and Gender Equity Lab.

Her areas of research and work include black women's organizations, black women intellectuals, and hip-hop feminism.

Publications Cooper's 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." The book won the 2018 Merle Curti Prize for Best Book in U.S. Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians.

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. The book collection received positive acclaim from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Literary Hub, and Ebony. The collection is a series of essays that originated on the blog The Crunk Feminist Collective, which Cooper co-founded.

In 2018, her book Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower was published by St. Martin's Press. In it, Cooper explores black feminism and anger, specifically the anger of black women, as a basis for revolutionary action. Kirkus Reviews praised the writing, calling it "Sharp and always humane, Cooper’s book suggests important ways in which feminism needs to evolve for the betterment not just of black women, but society as a whole."

Books The Crunk Feminist Collection (2017) Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017) Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (2018)