Bridget R. Cooks is an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, where she fills a joint appointment in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History. Cooks’ research focuses on African American art and culture, Black visual culture, museum criticism, film, feminist theory and post-colonial theory.

In 2002, she earned her doctorate degree in the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester. She has received a number of awards, grants and fellowships for her work including the prestigious James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History, and the Henry Luce Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. She has also curated several exhibitions of African American art including “The Art of Richard Mayhew” at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, 2009-2010.