SUSAN BURGESS

CAREER AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Susan Burgess is a professor of political science at Ohio University whose field of expertise is U.S. public law. She is running for the APSA Council to promote methodological pluralism and democratic representation in the Association.

Prof. Burgess has held many leadership roles in the profession. She is on the editorial board of Political Research Quarterly and has served on the Executive Council of the WPSA. She has been secretary of the MPSA’s Women's Caucus and a member of APSA’s Committee on the Status of Women. She has served as head of APSA’s GLBT Caucus and was a member of APSA’s Committee on the Status of GLBT Scholars in the profession. She worked as program organizer for the Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence Section of APSA and has served on the Executive Committee of the Law and Courts Section. She has also been Director of Women’s Studies at the University of the Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ohio University, where she launched an undergraduate major in women’s studies.

She has published a book entitled Contest for Constitutional Authority: The Abortion and War Powers Debates, and has another on the way called Who’s Your Daddy? The Founding Fathers and Popular Culture in Contemporary Constitutional Discourse.  Her work has appeared in numerous disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals including Political Research Quarterly; Polity; Review of Politics; PS; Law and Society Review; Law, Culture, and the Humanities; and Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.

STATEMENT OF VIEWS

If elected, I will pursue the following goals that have been articulated by many APSA members, including those active in the Perestroika movement:

• Promoting methodological pluralism, including parity for qualitative methods;

• Instituting electoral reform to ensure competitive elections amongst diverse candidates;

• Responding to threats to academic freedom;

• Enhancing inclusion of non-Ph.D. granting institutions;

• Increasing interdisciplinary cooperation with related professional organizations.

I have worked on these issues throughout my eighteen years in the profession. As a member of the Executive Committee of APSA’s Law and Courts Section I strove to foster pluralism in a group whose members employ an array of methodological approaches. I have worked in both Ph.D. and non-Ph.D. granting departments, gaining an awareness of the different issues that arise in each. My research on the judiciary integrates innovative methods into the study of politics and I have become intimately aware of the professional prospects and problems associated with doing so.