Carolyn Cooper

Carolyn Cooper CD (born November 20 1950) is a West Indian author and literary scholar. Born in Jamaica, she is a professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. From 1975 to 1980, she was an assistant professor at Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. She was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies in 1980.

Carolyn Joy Cooper was born in 1950 in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In 1968 she was awarded the Jamaica Scholarship (Girls). She attended the University of the West Indies, Mona, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (B.A. English) in 1971. She was awarded a Canadian International Development Agency fellowship to the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1971 to study for her master's degree in English, which was followed by the completion of her Ph. D at the same institution in 1977.

She was instrumental in establishing in 1994 the Reggae Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona, which has hosted numerous public lectures and symposiums featuring reggae/dancehall artists and other practitioners in the music industry in Jamaica and internationally such as Lady Saw, Vybz Kartel, Bounty Killer, Tony Rebel, Ninjaman, Louise Frazer-Bennett, Christine Hewett, Tanya Stephens, Gentleman and Queen Ifrica. Professor Cooper founded the annual Bob Marley Lecture in 1997. The Reggae Studies Unit has also convened academic conferences, including in 2008 the Global Reggae Conference, the plenary papers for which are collected in Global Reggae (2012), edited by Cooper and published by the University of the West Indies Press. With Dr Eleanor Wint, Cooper co-edited Bob Marley: The Man and His Music (2003), a selection of papers presented at the 1995 symposium that marked the reggae icon's 50th birthday.

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