The Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies is delighted to celebrate the stellar career of Dr. Cindy Burack, who is retiring this spring. In 1999, Professor Dr. Burack joined what was then the Department of Women’s Studies as an associate professor of political and feminist theory. Over her 26 years at The Ohio State University, Dr. Burack has demonstrated exemplary commitments to advancing knowledge across several fields of inquiry including feminist political theory, psychoanalysis, political psychology, religion and politics, and sexuality and queer studies.
Her scholarship centers cultural and social issues as they intersect with the state through political structures and state-sanctioned policies. By engaging the politics of religion and the intricacies of the conservative religious right’s rhetoric, Dr. Burack’s body of work uplifts the complicated interplay between the U.S. government and international governing bodies’ commitments to human rights and attacks on LGBTI rights. She has published an impressive five monograms and edited two collections on the themes of human rights, LGBTI rights, group politics and right-wing Christianity. She also published sixteen 16 peer-reviewed articles in highly-ranked journals and 21 book chapters and online essays. Indicative of the interdisciplinary nature of her work and its wide appeal across other areas of study, her 2004 book, Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups, won the Gradiva Book Award in Historical, Cultural and Literary Analysis of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Burack’s work was also honored with a Simon Hallworth Research Fellowship at the University of Manchester, U.K. in 2009, and she was the 2016-2018 winner of the Equality Knowledge Project Research Award for “LGBTQ Human Rights and the U.S. Government Abroad” from the Equality Research Center at Eastern Michigan University. Her most recent book entitled, How Trump and the Christian Right Saved LGBTI Human Rights: A Religious Freedom Mystery (SUNY Press, 2022) is emblematic of how she interrogates Christian conservativism’s rise and entanglement with international human rights policy, a theme she has visited across several of these works.
While a prolific writer in her own right, she has also committed to providing avenues for others to publish, often those exploring new, expansive and provocative topics. Most notably, she along with colleague Jyl Josephson founded and co-edited the Queer Politics and Cultures book series for State University of New York Press. From 2008-2025, the series produced 21 books, with another four forthcoming. In addition, she has served on several editorial boards and took on multiple service positions for the American Political Science Association and other academic associations. She has been a diligent book reviewer, and her professional service also includes work with the National Science Foundation’s efforts on gender equity in STEM fields.
In our department, Dr. Burack has taught nine graduate courses and 18 undergraduate courses, broadening our curricular offerings across the years as her interests evolved. In her courses, Dr. Burack is known to weave together the classic political theory canon, feminist theory, novels, poetry and government reports to produce a rigorous intellectual experience for her students. In recounting her inclusion of The Handmaid’s Tale in an undergraduate course (long before the popular television series), she wrote that she wanted to situate students in a learning environment that offered them spaces to think through their own relations to equality, consent, participation, justice and power as part of understanding citizenship, and one’s own connectedness to political life. Reflecting on her students’ experiences she once wrote, “…I think it might be well simply to suggest that there is a difference between leaving students to indulge in their own definitions of intellectual substance and challenging them to construct more inclusive and coherent ones. The latter method leaves neither students nor teachers as they were before.”
Dr. Burack advised numerous graduate students as an advisor and exam committee member. Her work with undergraduates includes her service as a faculty resident director for the Honors and Scholars Program’s London Honors Study Abroad. She has been invited to speak to many student groups and this year is delivering the keynote address at the Ohio State Mount Leadership Scholars annual meeting. Her service to the university included department, college and university appointments. She was a member of the Faculty Senate and served on the Faculty Hearing Committee. Within WGSS, she has served on all major committees and as chair of Promotion and Tenure. She has extended a feminist analytical lens across the university through her affiliations with the Center for the Study of Religion; Center for Ethics and Human Values; and the Mershon Center.
In addition to her research, teaching and service to the university, Dr. Burack also found time to nurture her love of music. She contributed her vocal talents to the Columbus community by singing in local chorale ensembles. Those who have visited her office may recall her office’s music stand that she used when practicing.
We sincerely thank Dr. Cindy Burack for her outstanding years of service to our department, her profession, the university and the Columbus community. We wish her much success in all her future endeavors.