Speaker Bios
Alicia Guttierez-Romine (La Sierra University)
https://lasierra.edu/history-politics-and-sociology/alicia-gutierrez-romine/
Alicia Gutierrez-Romine is a U.S. historian with an emphasis on California and the west and the history of medicine. Dr. Gutierrez-Romine’s current research explores the life and activism of Dr. Edna Griffin, the first Black woman physician in Pasadena, and her role in the Civil Rights Movement in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. Her manuscript, From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) traces the history of a medical procedure from the proverbial “back alley” to the U.S.-Mexico border. This innovative work describes in detail what happened in California when medicine became subject to atypical legislation. Read more >
Barbara Molony (Santa Clara University)
https://www.scu.edu/cas/history/faculty-and-staff/barbara-molony/
Barbara Molony is the 2020-2023 Co-President of the Berks. According to Barbara’s SCU bio, “My teaching and research interests focus on modern Japan and its global connections. I currently teach courses on medieval as well as modern Japan; women and gender in China, Japan, and Korea; the intersection of race and imperialism in East Asia; and a multi-national, multi-cultural seminar on gender and rights in the modern era. I encourage students to think about transnational issues such as religion, race, class, modernity, sexuality, the environment, citizenship and nationality, human rights, ideology, construction of masculinities and femininities, and technology.” Read more >
Deirdre Cooper Owens (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Shortened bio via: https://www.deirdrecooperowens.com/bio
Deirdre Cooper Owens is The Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine program. She is also an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer. A popular public speaker, she has published essays, book chapters, and blog pieces on a number of issues that concern African American experiences. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology (UGA Press, 2017) won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the OAH as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history.
Professor 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. Currently, she is working on a second book project that examines mental illness during the era of United States slavery and is also writing a popular biography of Harriet Tubman that examines her through the lens of disability. She primarily teaches classes on the history of medicine.
Marquita Raley-Cooper
from https://alexsym.org/artists/marquita-raley-cooper/
Lauded and recognized around the globe, mezzo-soprano Marquita Cooper exhibits beauty and versatility on the stage. Her work has been praised by The New York Times and Opera News for “Her big, pulsating instrument.”
Ms. Cooper, a native of Washington, D.C., has toured internationally, singing repertoire spanning the Baroque through 21st Century. She debuted in recitals at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall with The New York Philharmonic in New York City and with The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She is also a featured soloist with Ebony String Quartet with works by leading female composer Christina Spinei, Jazz at Lincoln Center for Wynton Marsalis’s Abyssinian: A Gospel Celebration and Leonard Bernstein’s Candide with The New York Philharmonic and a guest artist for Lyric Fest accompanied by acclaimed pianist, Laura Ward. She was recently presented in concert with Hogfish Regenerative Arts in collaboration with The Amarantos Quartet and pianist Kayo Iwama.
Ms. Cooper has been invited to sing for such people as the late Maya Angelou, the late William Warfield, opera singers Denyce Graves, William Stone, Matthew Polenzani, Renee Fleming, Marilyn Horne, and Suzanne Mentzer. She has also been recognized as a major figure on the rise in the world of classical music by musician and composer H. Leslie Adams and the late Nico Castel. Oratorio works include George Frideric Handel’s Messiah and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem. Operatic roles include Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Baba the Turk (The Rake’s Progress), Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte), Marcellina (Le nozze di Figaro), 2nd & 3rd Lady (Die Zauberflöte), Anne (The Mother of Us All), Gianetta (L’elisir d’amore), Fountain Voice (Ainadamar), Martha (Iolanta), and Madame Flora (The Medium), Delilah (Samson et Delilah) with Venture Opera, Philadelphia Opera, and Chautauqua Opera.
Ms. Cooper holds degrees from The Juilliard School (BM) and The Curtis School of Music (MM). She joined the faculty of Summer Arts with Juilliard (Switzerland) in 2021. Ms. Cooper serves on the faculty of Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. as an Instructor of Voice. She is the founder of The Cooperative, an all-black female ensemble that combined classical music, spoken word, and theater to bring awareness to music composed by Black Female composers.
Johanna Schoen (Rutgers University)
https://ifh.rutgers.edu/faculty_staff/johanna-schoen/
Johanna Schoen (Ph.D. Univ. of North Carolina, 1996) is a professor in the Department of History at Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. Her major interests are the history of women and medicine, the history of reproductive rights, and the history of sexuality. Her research traces women’s health and reproductive care through the twentieth century. Her first book, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, examines the role which birth control, sterilization, and abortion played in public health and welfare policies between the 1920s and the 1970s. Read more>
Sabia C. Wade, “The Black Doula”
https://www.sabiawade.com/
Sabia Wade (she/they), is a Black, Queer, CEO, Investor, Author, Educator, Full Spectrum Doula, and expander of Black Luxury. Sabia is the founder of Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings, For the Village Inc, Loads of Pride Logistics, and author of Birthing Liberation (now available for preorder!). She provides mentorship to entrepreneurs, serves as an executive coach and board member, as well as a speaker, educator, and programming development consultant for organizations and communities throughout the Birth and Reproductive Health Industry around the world. As an advocate for inclusivity, equality, and access, every part of Sabia’s life’s work centers on liberation of all people through Reproductive Justice. Read more >
Karin Wulf (Brown University)
https://karinwulf.com/about-karin-wulf/
Karin Wulf is the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian, John Carter Brown Library and Professor of History at Brown University. A historian of gender, family and politics in eighteenth-century British America, Karin Wulf earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins University. Her current book Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Before coming to the JCB and Brown in 2021, she was the Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture from 2013-21 and Professor of History at William & Mary. Read more >
