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.