Bennett College Announces Alumna Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens As Sesquicentennial Founders Day Convocation Speaker

Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens

2023 Founders Day Convocation Speaker

Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:00 am

Bennett College announces alumna Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens ’94 as the College’s sesquicentennial Founders Day Convocation speaker on Sunday, October 8, 2023. The Convocation will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Bennett College, paying homage to the College’s 1873 beginnings in the basement of Warnersville Methodist Episcopal Church (now known as St. Matthews United Methodist Church).

Deirdre Cooper Owens is an award-winning author, historian, and reproductive justice advocate. She is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. Before this position, she was one of two Black women in the country with an endowed professorship in the history of medicine who also directed a medical humanities program.

A popular public speaker and writer, Dr. Cooper Owens has published both scholarly and popular pieces on issues that concern African American historical experiences and reproductive justice. She is an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer, a past American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Fellow and has won several prestigious honors and awards for her scholarly and advocacy work in history and reproductive and birthing justice. Her first book, “Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology” won a Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history. The book explores how physicians used powerless 19th century women for medical experimentation.

Historian Deirdre Cooper Owens will chronicle the history of Bennett College’s founding and the impact of the college on this nation politically, educationally, and culturally. In this talk, Dr. Cooper Owens (Class of 1994) hopes to inspire and also, tell the truth about the importance of Black institution building, education, and ultimately, how Black women’s sisterhood can save us all.

“Educating a Nation: The Founding of Bennett College and the Making of Black History”

She is currently working on a popular biography of Harriet Tubman that examines her through the lens of disability. Dr. Cooper Owens is also writing a monograph about the history of race, medical discovery, and the C-section.

As one of the country’s most “acclaimed experts in U.S. history,” according to Time Magazine, Dr. Cooper Owens is steadily working towards making history more accessible and inspiring for all.

The Founders Day Convocation will be held at 10 a.m. on October 8, 2023 in the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Chapel on the Bennett campus.