Carolyn Cooper Carolyn Cooper Is a Recently Retired Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies Who Taught at the University of T
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Carolyn Cooper Carolyn Cooper is a recently retired professor of literary and cultural studies who taught at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica for thirty- six years. In 1968, she was awarded the Jamaica Scholarship (Girls) to do her B.A. in English at Mona. On completion of the degree in 1971, she won a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) fellowship to do her MA at the University of Toronto. She received fellowships from the University of the West Indies and the University of Toronto to do her PhD, which she completed in 1977. After teaching for five years at Atlantic Union College, a small private college in New England, Dr. Cooper returned to UWI in 1980. There she taught courses on Caribbean, African-American and African literature as well as popular culture. Her innovative course, “Reggae Poetry,” which is offered by the Department of Literatures in English, continues to attract students from across the faculties as well as international students. In 1992, Professor Cooper conceived the International Reggae Studies Centre and provided intellectual leadership for this far-reaching enterprise for more than a decade since its institutionalisation at Mona in 1994 as the somewhat diminished Reggae Studies Unit. She initiated the annual Bob Marley Lecture in 1997 as well as a hugely popular series of talks by an array of reggae/dancehall artists, other industry experts and academics including Lady Saw, Buju Banton, Tony Rebel, Queen Ifrica, Luciano, Capleton, Ninjaman, Gentleman, Louise Frazer-Bennett, Jeremy Harding, Mikey Bennett, Brent Clough and Lez Henry. The premier academic accomplishment of the Reggae Studies Unit is the establishment of an innovative, inter-disciplinary undergraduate degree programme in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management. The brainchild of Kam-Au Amen, the first MA graduate in Cultural Studies at UWI, Mona, the degree remains one of the most popular in the Faculty of Humanities and Education. In the 1980s, Professor Cooper was a member of the Women’s Studies Working Group at Mona which laid the foundation for the cross-campus Institute of Gender and Development Studies. As Campus Co-ordinator, she initiated the founding of the Association of Women’s Organisations of Jamaica (AWOJA). A well-known media personality in Jamaica, Professor Cooper writes a weekly column for the Sunday Gleaner that she posts on her bilingual blog, “Jamaica Woman Tongue.” In the 1990s she wrote a bilingual column for the Jamaica Observer. She has appeared in several documentaries on Caribbean culture produced by a wide range of local and international media houses such as Television Jamaica, B. World Connection (Guadeloupe), Al Jazeera English TV, the BBC, National Public Radio (USA), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and ARD TV (Germany). Professor Carolyn Cooper remains a public intellectual committed to widening debates on cultural politics beyond the walls of the university. REFEREED ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS BOOKS Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004; rpt 2005. Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993; rpt 1994; 2003. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995; rpt 2000; 2008 (electronic). BOOK CHAPTERS “Erotic Maroonage: Embodying Emancipation in Jamaican Dancehall Culture”. Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha, eds. Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2016, 79-86. Presented at the Emancipation Bicentenary Symposium, Yale University, November, 2007 “‘Disguise Up De English Language’: Turning Linguistic Tricks in Creole- Anglophone Caribbean Literature”. Supriya Nair, ed. Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature. Modern Languages Association, 2012, 155-167. “African Diaspora Studies in the Creole-Anglophone Caribbean: A Perspective from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica”. Tejumola Olaniyan and James H. Sweet, eds. The African Diaspora and the Disciplines, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010, 279-297. Presented at a symposium on “African Diaspora Studies and the Disciplines,” University of Wisconsin, Madison, March 2006 “‘I Shot the Sheriff’: Gun Talk in Jamaican Popular Music.” Charles Springwood, ed. Open Fire: Understanding Global Gun Cultures. Oxford & New York: Berg, 2007, 153-164. Excerpted from the chapter “‘Lyrical Gun’: Metaphor and Role Play in Jamaican Dancehall Culture” in Sound Clash. Presented at the 30th Annual Conference, Caribbean Studies Association, Santo Domingo, May 2005 “‘Come to Jamaica and Feel Alright!’: Marketing Reggae As Heritage Tourism.” Chandana Jayawardena, ed. Caribbean Tourism: More Than Sun, Sand and Sea. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2007, 222-233. An expanded version is also published as “‘Welcome to Jamrock’: Reggae Tourism and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica.” Kenneth Hall and Rheima Holding, eds. Tourism: The Driver of Change in the Jamaican Economy? Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2006, 358-374. “‘Meck West Indies Federate’: Celebrating the Arts of Regional Integration in the Poetry of Louise Bennett.” Kenneth Hall and Denis Benn, eds. Caribbean Imperatives: Regional Governance and Integrated Development. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2005, 31-51. Edited version of the journal article, “‘West Indies Plight’: Louise Bennett and the Cultural Politics of Federation.” Social and Economic Studies 48.4 (1999) : 211-228. “Writing Oral History: Sistren Theatre Collective’s Lionheart Gal.” Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair, eds. Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Berg, 2005, 169-177. Reprint of a 1989 Kunapipi journal article; also republished in Noises in the Blood. “Mix Up the Indian with All the Patwa: Rajamuffin Sounds in ‘Cool’ Britannia.” Christine G.T. Ho and Keith Nurse, eds. Globalisation, Diaspora & Caribbean Popular Culture. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2005, 119-140. First published in Sound Clash. “‘A Whole Ton-Load a Lie’: Doing Ethical Research in the Creole/Anglophone Caribbean,” published electronically in 2005 in the Proceedings of the 1st Caribbean Ethics Conference, University of the West Indies, Mona, April 28-30, 2005. “‘Mama, Is That You?’: Erotic Disguise in the Films Dancehall Queen and Babymother.” Barbara Bailey and Elsa Leo-Rhynie, eds. Gender in the 21st Century: Caribbean Perspectives, Visions and Possibilities. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2004, 262-280. Republished in Sound Clash. “Dancehall Dress: Competing Codes of Decency in Jamaica.” Carol Tulloch, ed. Black Style. London: V & A Publications, 2004, 68-83. Incorporates material from Sound Clash. “Hip-hopping Across Cultures: From Reggae to Rap and Back.” Verene Shepherd and Glen Richards, eds. Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture. Kingston: Ian Randle & Oxford: James Currey, 2002, 265- 282. First published as “Raggamuffin Sounds: Crossing over from Reggae to Rap and Back.” Caribbean Quarterly 44.1 & 2 (1998) : 153-168. Also republished in Sound Clash. “Virginity Revamped: Representations of Female Sexuality in the Lyrics of Bob Marley and Shabba Ranks.” Kwesi Owusu, ed. Black British Culture and Society. London: Routledge 1999, 347-357. Revised version, with a new title, “Slackness Personified,” published in Sound Clash. “‘Sense Make Befoh Book’: Grenadian Popular Culture and the Rhetoric of Revolution in Merle Collins’ Angel and The Colour of Forgetting.” Janice Liddell and Yakini Kemp, eds. Arms Akimbo: Afrikana Women in Contemporary Literature. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999, 176-188. Expanded version of “Grenadian Popular Culture and the Rhetoric of Revolution: Merle Collins’ Angel.” Caribbean Quarterly 40.2 (1995) : 57-70. “Du Reggae au Ragga: Que Reste-t-il de la Contestation?” [“From Reggae To Ragga: What’s Left of the Protest?” Translated from English by the Publisher]. Alain Darre, ed. Musique et politique: Les répertoires de l’identité. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1996, 281-288. First presented at a Forum on “Music and Society,” 23rd Annual Cultural Festival of Fort-de-France, Martinique, July 1994. (Co-author Hubert Devonish) “A Tale of Two States: Language, Lit/Orature and the Two Jamaicas.” Stewart Brown, ed. The Pressures of the Text: Orality, Texts and the Telling of Tales. Birmingham: Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, 1995, 60-74. Revised version, with a new title, “The Dancehall Transnation,” published in Sound Clash. “‘Resistance Science’: Afrocentric Ideology in Vic Reid’s Nanny-Town.” E. Kofi Agorsah, ed. Maroon Heritage. Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad: University of the West Indies Canoe Press, 1994, 109-118. “‘Something Ancestral Recaptured’: Spirit Possession as Trope in Selected Feminist Fictions of the African Diaspora.” Susheila Nasta, ed. Motherlands. London: The Women’s Press, 1991, 64-87. “Afro-Jamaican Folk Elements in Brodber’s Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home.” Carol Boyce-Davies and Elaine Fido, eds. Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1990, 279-288. First published as “The Fertility of the Gardens of Women.” New Beacon Review 2 & 3 (1986) : 139-147. “Unorthodox Prose: The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey.” Patrick Bryan and Rupert Lewis, eds. Marcus Garvey: His Life and Legacy. Institute of Social and Economic Research & Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica 1988, 113-121. First published