PAGE Co-Directors

monét cooper

monét cooper is a poet, teacher-educator, and doctoral candidate from Mvskoke land (Decatur, Georgia), who came to the University of Michigan’s Joint Program in English and Education after spending 11 years as a middle and high school English teacher. She received her bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Georgia and her master’s in African American Studies from Boston University. In her research, monét uses poetics of ethnography, interiority, and attention to study Black trans and queer girls’ and femme youths’ literacies as the practice of freedom in their learning spaces, contemplating how possibility for abolition and liberation emerges from everyday messiness, pleasure, and desire. Her dissertation research and creative writing are generously supported by fellowships, awards, and grants from Lambda Literary, National Council of Teachers of English, American Educational Research Association, Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Hurston-Wright Foundation, the Learning for Justice Educator Fund, and a blooming garden of ancestors, elders, and friends. monét co-hosts Dancing on Desks, a podcast that celebrates justice-full, liberatory, and abolitionist education. monét always welcomes naps, porch sits, and baking German chocolate cake.

As a PAGE co-director, she is honored to engage in the delight of creating space for artistic praxis within the hum of learning alongside this year’s co-directors and fellows.