Cathy J. Cohen

Cathy J. Cohen (born 1962) is an American author, feminist and social activist whose work has focused on the African-American experience in politics from a perspective which is underlined by intersectionality. A former Director of the Center for the Study of Race (2002–05), she is currently David and Mary Winton Green Professor in Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. She received her BA from Miami University, Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1993 and began her academic career at Yale University where she received tenure. Cohen joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 2002.

Cohen frequently writes and speaks about gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and their interrelatedness and connection to power. This approach puts her in a class of leftist intellectuals who work to have social and public policy influence on the lives of marginalized groups in a positive way. Cohen, a black lesbian and a parent, is the principal researcher on the Black Youth Project, and is the author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and The Future of American Politics and Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics among others. She is also the co-author of a study on New Media and Youth Political Action, which is part of the Youth and Participatory Politics survey project.

Her book Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics explores how issues such as age, gender, sexuality and the growing AIDs epidemic shape the acceptance boundaries within the African-American community. She was also on the board of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press as well as the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY. Along with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto, Cohen is a co-editor of Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (NYU, 1997). She has received a number of awards, including the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator’s Award, and the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Fellowship.

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