Jerrold S. Cooper

W.W. Spence Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages

Contact Information

Education: PhD, University of Chicago Oriental Institute

Jerry Cooper received his PhD from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute in 1969, and taught at Johns Hopkins from 1968 until 2008, when he became W. W. Spence Professor Emeritus and moved to Berkeley, California, where he is Research Associate in the University of California’s Near Eastern Studies Department. He has had guest appointments at UC Berkeley, UCLA; Padua, Rome "La Sapienza"; and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Author of four books and numerous articles and reviews, he is pursuing projects in the History of Assyriology, Mesopotamian Historiography, Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient Near East, the Origins and Development of Writing Systems, and Sumerian Literature.

  • Female Trouble (2017)
  • Namzitara Reconsidered (2017)
  • Job of Sex (2016)
  • Sumerian Literature and Identity (2016)
  • Was Uruk the First Sumerian City (2016)
  • Sex and the Temple (2013)
  • Sumer, Sumerian (2013)
  • Wine Debt from Emar (2012)
  • Namzitara FS Kilmer (2011)
  • Forgetting Sumerians (2010)
  • Blind Workmen (2010)
  • Free Love Bottéro MV (2009)
  • Ghosts (2009)
  • Incongruent Corpora (2008)
  • Redundancy Reconsidered (2008)
  • Religion and Power Response (2008)
  • Lamentation (JCS 58 2006)
  • Margins of Writing Response (2006)
  • Prostitution (RLA 11 2006)
  • Right Writing (ASJ 22 2005)
  • Umm el-Marra Tablet (SCCH 15 2005)
  • Babylonian Beginnings (2004)
  • Last Writing (CSSH 45 2003)
  • Virginity (RAI 47 2002)
  • Buddies in Babylonia (Jacobsen MV 2002)
  • Sumerian and Semitic Writing (RAI 42 1999)
  • Gendered Sexuality (1997)
  • Sumerian and Akkadian (1996)
  • From Mosul to Manila (1992)