Cookie Woolner

https://cookiewoolner.com/

Education

Ph.D., History and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, 2014.

Fields of Interest

My fields of interest are the history of women and gender, the history of sexuality and queer history, African American history, the history of popular culture, music, and performance, modern U.S. history, social and cultural history, and feminist/queer theory.

I have just published my first book, The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire Before Stonewall (UNC Press, 2023).

Courses taught

Dr. Woolner teaches the following courses: US History Since 1877; History of Women in America; Queer American History; Selling Sound: A Cultural History of American Music; Gender and Popular Culture. She also teaches the following graduate courses: Women and Gender Historiography; Studies After 1877: US Cultural History; Popular American Music and Performance; Research Seminar; Gender and Popular Culture.

Representative Publications

"'Unfortunate Attachments:' Interracial Sapphism in Progressive Era Reformatories and Prisons," The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice, the Nursing Clio Editorial Collective, editors (Rutgers University Press, 2025). 

"It Didn’t Start with Stonewall: From Gay Rights to Gay Liberation," The American Historian, Summer 2025, pp. 15-19.

“Never No Wells Of Lonelinesses In Harlem:” Black Lady Lovers In Prohibition Era  New York,” Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, June 2022. 

“Gay Harlem” entry, The People's Guide to New York City. Emily Molina, Penny Lewis, and Carolina Bank Munoz, eds. University of California Press, 2022.  

"LGBT History" chapter, Routledge History of the 20th Century United States. Darren Dochuk and Jerald Podair, eds. (Routledge, 2018)

Book review of LaShawn Harris’ Sex Workers, Psychics, and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (Illinois, 2016), Journal of African American History, Vol. 104, No. 1, Winter 2019, pp. 127-129. 

"'Woman Slain in Queer Love Brawl:' African American Women, Same-Sex Desire, and Violence in the Urban North, 1920-1929," The Journal of African American History special issue: "Gendering the Carceral State: African American Women, History, and Criminal Justice," Cheryl Hicks and Kali Gross, eds., Vol. 100, No. 3, Summer 2015, pp. 406-427

Representative Conferences

Invited panelist, "Queering and Gendering Your Syllabi in an 'Anti-Woke' Era," American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, January 2026.

Invited chair and commenter, "Domestic Alternative Intimacies of the Fin-De-Siècle" panel, Queer History Conference, Fullerton, CA, June 2024.

Chair and panel creator, “Y’all Means All: Doing Queer Southern Public History Now,” Organization of American Historians annual meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 2024.

“State of the Field: LGBTQ U.S. History,” virtual roundtable panel, Organization of American Historians, April 2021. 

“Blessed Are the Barren: Black Queer Women’s Critiques of Motherhood and Reproduction in the Early 20th Century,” Queer History Conference, San Francisco State University, June 2019.

"Southern Vaudeville Routes and the Circulation of Black Queer Possibilities," Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, 2018

"'Framing Women in Harlem:' Regulating Black Women's Sexuality in the Prohibition Underworld," American Society for Legal History Annual Meeting, 2017

"A Very Enjoyable Stay in Gay Paree:" African American Women Performers and Queer Interracial Circuits in the Jazz Age," American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, January 2016

"Women's Queer Labor and Resistance in the Black Popular Entertainment Industry of the Early-Twentieth Century," American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, October 2015

Service

Board Member, The Journal of Lesbian Studies and The Journal of Fat Studies. 

Governing Board Member, The Committee on LGBT History (American Historical Association Affiliate Society)

Committee on the Status of LGBTQ Historians and LGBTQ Histories, Organization of American Historians, 2020-2024 (Chair for 2022-23).

Department Service: Director of Grad studies; Chair of Grad Studies Committee; Women's History Month Executive Committee.