Dr. Melissa Cooper, PhD
Dr. Cooper is a writer, historian and professor. She is the author of the groundbreaking historical study, Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (2017). Making Gullah captured the attention of general reading audiences, students and scholars. Cooper’s book was discussed and featured in a variety of media ranging from The New Yorker, Atlanta Journal Constitution and Upscale Magazine to podcasts and radio shows. Cooper is also the author of “Selling Voodoo In Migration Metropolises” in the edited collection Race and Retail (2015), and Instructor's Resource Manual—Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents (2012). Dr. Cooper has appeared in several documentaries—a list that most recently includes Henry Louis Gates’s PBS documentary The Black Church: This Our Story, This is Our Song (2021) and Great Migrations: A People on the Move (2025).
Dr. Cooper’s teaching experience spans more than two decades. She is currently Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark. Dr. Cooper won an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation in 2019. She was also a 2021 Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the recipient of the 2020-2021 Rutgers University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research.
Dr. Cooper’s teaching experience spans more than two decades. She is currently Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark. Dr. Cooper won an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation in 2019. She was also a 2021 Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the recipient of the 2020-2021 Rutgers University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research.