Rebecca Traister and Brittney Cooper Coming to Rutgers to Discuss the Political Power of Women’s Anger

November 2016. The first woman to be nominated for the presidency on a major-party ticket wins the popular vote by a wide margin while losing the Electoral College. Two months later, one day after the presidential inauguration, the Women’s March becomes the largest protest event in American history. In October 2017, the #MeToo movement, begun more than a decade earlier, breaks through and changes the conversation around sexual harassment and abuse. January 2019. After unprecedented numbers of women ran for and won elected office, the 116th Congress is sworn in with the largest and most diverse group of women serving in history.

Later this month, the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and its Center for American Women and Politics will host The Political Power of Women's Anger: A Conversation with Rebecca Traister and Brittney Cooper, a discussion of how women engage with and alter their political environment, through history and in the context of the Trump era.

The event will be held on January 29th at 6pm ET at Trayes Hall in the Douglass Student Center on the Rutgers University-New Brunswick campus. The talk will also be livestreamed via the Center’s Facebook page, and, following their discussion, Traister and Cooper will participate in a Q&A with audience members and livestream viewers.

Rebecca Traister is a writer at large with New York magazine and a contributing editor at Elle, whose most recent book, New York Times bestseller Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger, explores women’s anger through America’s political history, the ways their anger is used against them, and how that anger becomes fuel for change at historical inflection points.

Brittney Cooper is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and the co-founder of Crunk Feminist Collective. Her cultural commentary has been featured on MSNBC, PBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Root, TED, Essence, and more. Her latest book, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, cracks the clichés of Black women’s anger and argues for it as a wellspring of personal and political empowerment.

This event is open press and books will be available for purchase and signing by the authors following their conversation. To register, email Daniel De Simone at ddesimone@eagleton.rutgers.edu before January 25th.