Brittney C. Cooper
Pioneering Women
A Louisiana native, she considers herself a small-town Southern girl at heart.
She earned a B.A. in English and Political Science from Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, DC.
She then pursued a master’s and doctorate in American Studies (and a Women’s Studies Certificate) from Emory University in Atlanta.
In 2009 she began teaching at the University of Alabama, in the Department of Gender and Race Studies. She then became a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers in New Jersey.
In 2019 she is an associate professor at Rutgers, in the departments of Women’s & Gender Studies and Africana Studies. Her research relates to black women’s intellectual history, race and gender in popular culture, and new media.
She teaches courses such as Black Feminist Thought; Hip Hop: The Birth and Evolution; and Hip Hop Generation Feminism.
In 2010 she cofounded Crunk Feminist Collective. (Crunk music is a Southern subgenre of hip hop.)
Blogging as “Crunktastic,” she is known for her posts about gender politics in the hip hop generation, faith and feminism, dating while feminist, and contemporary feminist movements.
The feminist-of-color scholar-activist group also does speaking tours, conducts workshops, and engages in activism related to women’s issues.
She coedited The Crunk Feminist Collection, published by The Feminist Press in 2017.
She has written two books related to black feminist thought, and contributed to Cosmopolitan.com, Salon.com, and Ms. magazine. Numerous media outlets have featured her social commentary.
She also studies and writes about historical black women’s organizations as sources of intellectual thought.
She has received awards for writing, activism, and teaching. In 2016 she won the Olga Vives Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW).
She thinks black feminism can change the world for the better.