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. She attended the University of the West Indies, Mona, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 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, 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, a selection of papers presented at the 1995 symposium that marked the reggae icon's 50th birthday. Cooper is also the author of the books Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the "Vulgar" Body of Jamaican Popular Culture and Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large. A well-known media personality in Jamaica, Cooper is a weekly columnist for the Sunday Gleaner. In the 1990s, she co-hosted a television show, Man and Woman Story, with Dr Leahcim Semaj for the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. She also co-hosted a public affairs program, Question Time on CVM television, and, more recently, Big People Sup'm on PBC Jamaica.
Honours and recognition
The Jamaica Gleaner listed Carolyn Cooper as sixth in their list of "The 10 Best-Dressed Men & Women Of 2011". On 6 August 2013, Jamaica's 51st Independence Day, Professor Carolyn Cooper was awarded the national honour of the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander "for outstanding contribution to Education".
Selected articles
"Enslaved In Stereotypes: Race and Representation in Post-independence Jamaica", , 16, 2004, pp. 154–169.
"Punany Powah", Black Media Journal, 2, 2000, pp. 50–52.
"'West Indies plight': Louise Bennett and The Cultural Politics of Federation", Social and Economic Studies, 48, 1999, pp. 211–228.
"Ragamuffin sounds: Crossing over from reggae to rap and back", Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 44, nos 1 & 2, 1998, pp. 153–168.
"Race and the Cultural Politics of Self-representation: A View from the University of the West Indies", Research in African Literatures, 27, 1996, pp. 97–105.
"Lyrical Gun: Metaphor and Role Play in Jamaican Dancehall Culture", The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 35, Issues 3 & 4, 1994, pp. 429–447.
"Loosely talking theory: Oral/Sexual Discourse in Jamaican Popular Culture", The CRNLE Reviews Journal, 1, 1994, pp. 62–73.
