After a Life-Changing Accident, Brian Cooperman ’26 Found a New Path Through American Studies

The graduating senior focused his honors thesis on disability access and is planning for a future in advocacy law.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

When Brian Cooperman returned to class after a traumatic car accident in early 2023, he often sat in the back of the room wearing tinted glasses to ease the pain of chronic migraines. Some days, simply making it through a lecture felt like an accomplishment.

Amid those months of medical appointments and rehab, he found himself asking bigger questions about systems of care and the ways institutions respond to people in moments of vulnerability and disability.

And he discovered a new sense of purpose through his majors in American studies and anthropology, where he found he had space to explore those questions. Once on a pre-med track, he realized both majors “100 percent fit” a new path he sought to take toward advocacy law.

“I was learning how to look at systems and break them apart and do something with that,” said Cooperman, who graduates this week. “It was extremely valuable.” 

Cooperman originally arrived at college as a chemistry major planning to pursue psychiatry. While attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), he enrolled in an introductory American studies course to fulfill a general education requirement, and he “loved it.” As his interests shifted toward medical anthropology and broader questions about human behavior, Cooperman switched majors to anthropology at UMBC.

After transferring to UMD in Fall 2022, he added American studies as a second major. He was drawn to the program’s interdisciplinary approach and the opportunity to explore culture, institutions and lived experience from multiple perspectives. And he found the two disciplines complemented each other naturally: while anthropology allowed him to study human behavior broadly, American studies helped him “focus those questions through the lens of America.”

One course especially resonated after the car accident: Senior Lecturer in American Studies Asim Ali’s “Religion and American Culture,” which examines how American culture informs, and is informed by, the variety of religious beliefs and practices in the country. At a time when Cooperman was navigating disability accommodations, the medical system and plenty of uncertainty, the course gave him space to think critically about issues like care and access. He called it a “very peaceful class that was really grounding at the time.” 

That eventually shaped Cooperman’s honors thesis, an 82-page ethnographic study focused on disability in higher education. Through interviews with students and faculty, policy analysis, field observations and personal reflection, he examined how disabled students navigate institutional systems and accommodations on college campuses. 

“I began this project as a student trying to understand why access felt so difficult,” Cooperman wrote in the thesis conclusion. “I am finishing it as someone who now understands the structure that produces that difficulty.”

The project brought together ideas and methods from both of his majors while deepening his interest in advocacy and public policy. It also gave him the opportunity to work closely with Ali, who advised the thesis and became an important mentor. 

“Brian was able to use his own experience, in combination with American studies theory and method, to question why things are the way they are, and to consider the unexamined assumptions upon which our society is built,” Ali said.

He added that Cooperman remained committed to his studies even while navigating systems that often made continuing his education more difficult.

“It took a lot of energy and effort for him just to get to a point of being able to continue his work,” Ali said. “To his credit, he didn’t let this stop him.”

This fall, Cooperman will attend the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in Baltimore, where he hopes to pursue disability access or tenant advocacy law, to ultimately become an advocate for marginalized people.

Looking back, he said the College of Arts and Humanities gave him academic direction as well as compassion and support during a difficult period in his life.

“I think ARHU is a really special college,” Cooperman said. “I think it is a place with compassion and heart.”