Cynthia Barounis

Cynthia Barounis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University, and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on queer theory, disability studies, mad studies, feminist theory, masculinities, and the history of science and medicine. She is the author of Vulnerable Constitutions: Queerness, Disability, and the Remaking of American Manhood (Temple University Press, 2019), which won the 2020 Alison Piepmeier Book Prize from the National Women's Studies Association. Her current project explores crip theory and biopolitics through the lens of camp aesthetics.

Her work has been published in GLQ, Women's Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Visual Culture, and the Journal of Modern Literature. Her research bridges literary and cultural studies, interrogating intersections of gender, disability, and queerness. She is affiliated with McMillan Hall on the St. Louis campus.

• Awards: NWSA Alison Piepmeier Book Prize (2020)
• Advising & Grants: No specific advisees or grants listed in available texts.
• Labs/Teams: Engaged in interdisciplinary feminist and disability studies networks, currently developing a new monograph on camp aesthetics and biopolitics.