Brenda Cooper

Biography

Dr. Brenda Cooper is an emerita associate professor who taught for 19 years in the JCOM Department, retiring in 2013. She was also director of USU’s Women & Gender Studies (WGS) program for 10 years. Previously, Cooper was on the faculty at Kean College in Union, New Jersey, Trinity College in Burlington, Vermont, and was a teaching assistant at Ohio University and the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Cooper’s primary research and teaching areas were media criticism, with an emphasis on diversity issues, including media representations of gender, race and ethnicity, and LGBTQ individuals.

“I loved teaching at USU,” Cooper said. “My students were bright, challenging and curious — which makes for a great and interesting classroom environment. There were days when the learning went both ways. It was so much fun.

”In the early 2000s, Cooper played a key role in revising the JCOM undergraduate and graduate curriculum to integrate more theoretical and critical-thinking components into course offerings. Her courses encouraged student examination of the role of diversity in media and society, particularly as diversity affects the everyday experiences of Utah students. With her husband, JCOM department head Ted Pease, she developed and taught JCOM’s first course in media literacy, Media Smarts (JCOM 2010).

“Media Smarts was one of my favorite courses to teach, because you could almost see the lightbulbs going on as students realized that what they thought they knew about the world from their use of mass media wasn’t always true,” she said.

“It is so gratifying to feel that you are making a real connection and giving students the tools to explore media representations critically for themselves, and to see them find their own answers,” she said.

Cooper also created Gender & Media (JCOM/WGS 4410/5410) and Media Criticism (JCOM 4400/6400), as well as the first USU course focusing on issues related to media representations of the LGBTQ community. She also taught Intro to Women & Gender Studies (WGS 1010) and received multiple teaching awards.

In addition to her JCOM work, Cooper is proud of her work as director of USU’s Women & Gender Studies Program for 10 years and reviving its certificate program. Through WGS, departments from the sciences and engineering to education and the arts, humanities and social sciences designated classes with significant content relating to the role of gender in their disciplines. Under Cooper’s leadership, WGS gained greater campus and community visibility through speakers and events for Women’s History Month. The “Reinventing Barbie Bash” in 2009 celebrated the iconic doll’s 50th birthday by challenging stereotypes of women embodied in the perpetually high-heeled dolls. Participants “reinvented” more than 200 dolls — Barbie as Madame President, USU basketball coach, Suffragist, Marine, auto mechanic and 88-year-old — for a campus exhibit. The next year, students, faculty and community members dressed as their favorite unapologetic women — from Cleopatra to Rosa Parks to Lady Gaga — for a “Women Rock the Runway” event.

“Those were such great teaching moments,” Cooper said. “They really engaged students and connected coursework to things that are real in their lives.”

Teaching this material in Utah sometimes came with unique student interactions, Cooper recalled. “One JCOM student had reservations about taking my Media & Gender class because she said she’d heard I was a ‘radical feminist.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘Because you didn’t take your husband’s name.’ She did take the class and several other WGS courses to earn a WGS certificate and won a WGS scholarship.

”As with her teaching, Cooper’s research focused primarily on issues of media representations of diversity. Her research appeared in some of the leading juried scholarly journals in her field, including Critical Studies in Communication and Quarterly Journal of Speech. Topics included gender representations in film and on TV — such as a critical examination of gender representations in the film Thelma & Louise, to a study of the differences between spectator interpretations of Do the Right Thing, and a study of letters to the editor in Utah newspapers about the “morality” of Brokeback Mountain. Other pop culture subjects of her research included critical analyses of television series Allie McBeal, and films Out of Africa and Boys Don’t Cry. Cooper served on the editorial boards and as a reviewer for several juried scholarly journals.

Since retiring in 2013 to northern California, Cooper has hung up her running shoes after 40 years as a daily runner. She loves spending time walking Redwood Coast trails and beaches with her husband and dog.

“I’ve wanted to live on the coast all my life,” she said, and doesn’t miss Utah winters. She volunteers with the Humboldt County Animal Shelter and is re-learning the piano.