Deirdre Cooper Owens

Deirdre Cooper Owens is an American historian and reproductive rights activist known for her 2017 book Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. She is an associate professor at the University of Connecticut.

Deirdre Cooper Owens was born to a National Archives and Records Administration employee father and a genealogist mother and raised in Anacostia, a neighborhood in southeastern Washington D.C.^[1][2] Descending from South Carolina Lowcountry Gullahs on both her parents' sides,^[1] she learned Gullah-language stories from her grandfather as a young child.^[2]

Cooper Owens graduated from Bennett College, Clark Atlanta University, and University of California, Los Angeles, the latter where she obtained her PhD in history.^[2] She later joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she was Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and directed the Humanities In Medicine program.^[3] She also directed the Library Company of Philadelphia's program in African-American history.^[4] In 2023, she moved to the University of Connecticut's Department of History and the Africana Studies Institute and became an associate professor there.^[4]

As an academic, Cooper Owens specializes in African-American history, particularly history of medicine.^[1] In 2017, she published Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, a book on the exploitation of Black women in 19th-century gynecology;^[3] she won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Award for said book.^[5]

Cooper Owens is an advocate for reproductive justice, having worked with organizations in combating Black maternal mortality in the United States.^[1]

• Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (2017)^[6][7]