This October, Dr. Sarah Cooper, assistant professor in the Department of English, gave a public talk about her in-progress research for a new series hosted by the Joe Blake Center for Engaged Humanities.

Titled, “Archived Athletes: The Intersex and Trans Histories of the 1996 Olympics,” Cooper’s talk engaged the archives of Dr. Skip Elsas, a medical doctor tasked by the International Olympic Committee with verifying the gender identity of female athletes competing at the 1996 summer games in Atlanta.

Cooper’s interdisciplinary research resides at the intersection of archives, rhetoric, gender and queer theory, and sexuality studies. Earlier this month, she also presented new work, “Listening to Our Elders: Preservation Practices, Art Making, and Research From Lesbian Spaces” at the Lesbian Lives Conference, held at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

The 2024 Friedman Feminist Press Grant Recipient (Colorado State University) and the 2022 Tee A. Corrine Fellow (University of Oregon), Cooper is the author of two poetry collections: Permanent Marker (Paper Nautilus, 2020) and 89% (Clemson University Press 2022).  Her poems also appear in Lunch, Sinister Wisdom, Iron Horse and in Poem-A-Day.

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About the series

The Blake Center’s New Faculty Research Talks series highlights the scholarship of recently hired CSU humanists. The talks aim to introduce new faculty researchers to the CSU community, build connections among humanities scholars, and grow CSU’s humanities research culture. For more information about the series, contact Dr. Tom Dunn at thomas.dunn@colostate.edu.

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