Frederick Cooper (historian)


Frederick Cooper, born on October 27, 1947 in New York City, is an American historian who specializes in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history. After finishing his BA at Stanford University in 1969, Cooper received his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University in 1974. From 1974 to 1982 he was Assistant, then Associate Professor at Harvard University. Becoming Professor of History at the University of Michigan in 1982, he left for a professorship of history at New York University where he has worked since 2002.
Cooper initially studied the history of labor and of labor movements in East Africa, but later moved on to broaden his scope to embrace francophone West Africa as well. Though a firm base in social and polit-economical history is a constant of his works, one characteristic of Cooper`s approach to history is a strong concern with epistemological questions and the possibilities and limits of knowledge production, as can best be seen in his articles on globalization and identity, reprinted in his book "Colonialism in Question" in 2005. Cooper`s contributions to the history of colonialism in Africa and to contemporary African history have been crucial in the fields of African studies and beyond. One of his best known conceptual contributions is the concept of the gatekeeper state that he developed in a number of article contributions in the late 1990s, his book-length essay on "the past of the present" in 2002, and his masterful "Africa since 1940".
Cooper made some important impacts on the growing field of global history, not least with "Empires in World History" co-written with his wife, the historian Jane Burbank, and published in 2010. Moreover, over the course of the last decades, several topical collections of articles by a wide array of international scholars which Cooper edited or co-edited, have had a lasting impact on global historical thought and research directions. These include "Struggle for the City", "International Development and the Social Sciences", and "Tensions of Empire".

Awards and honors

Books