Historian, professor, and reproductive justice advocate Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens is Occidental College’s 2025 Stafford Ellison Wright Black Alumni Scholar-in-Residence. She will deliver a public lecture as part of her residency.
On Feb. 18, Cooper Owens will deliver a lecture titled “Slavery, Gynecology and Black Placental Resistance: Why Black Mothers Matter.” She will also hold a healing circle on Feb. 19 (more details to come). Read the related news story
Cooper Owens is an associate professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Connecticut. Before her most recent appointment, she simultaneously directed the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia and a medical humanities program at the University of Nebraska. During that time, she was the only Black woman in the country who served as director of an academic medical humanities program. Cooper Owens is a popular public speaker, has appeared in several documentaries, podcasts and television newscasts as a historical expert, and is a nationally recognized reproductive justice advocate.
Cooper Owens is an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer, a past American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Fellow, and a newly elected member of the American Antiquarian Society. Time magazine named her as one of the country’s “best historians.” She has won several prestigious honors and awards for her scholarly and advocacy work in history and reproductive and birthing justice. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology, won a Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history. It has been translated into Korean. She is currently working on a popular biography about Harriet Tubman that will examine her life through the lens of disability and is also writing a historical monograph about race, medical discovery, and the C-section.
Created by Occidental’s Black Alumni Organization (BAO), the Stafford Ellison Wright Endowment enables distinguished Black scholars from a variety of fields, artists, elected officials and others to spend time in residence at Occidental each year. BAO members believe that a student’s educational experience will be enriched by in-depth contact with individuals who serve as symbols of excellence.
