Deirdre Cooper Owens

Deirdre Cooper Owens, an award-winning historian and popular public speaker, is the Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In this position, Dr. Cooper Owens is one of two Black women in the U.S. running a medical humanities program. Dr. Cooper Owens is also the Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest cultural institution. She is the author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology.

Dr. Cooper Owens is a proud graduate of two historically black colleges and universities, the all-women’s Bennett College and Clark Atlanta University. She earned her Ph.D. in history at UCLA and has had a number of prestigious fellowships at the University of Virginia, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and as a Big Ten Academic Leadership Fellow. As one of the country’s most “acclaimed experts in U.S. history,” according to Time Magazine, Cooper Owens is steadily working towards making history more accessible and inspiring for all.