Sunnie Rucker-Chang will join the Slavic and East European languages and cultures and African and African American studies departments at the Ohio State University as an associate professor. Currently she is the associate professor and program director in Slavic and East European studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is also the co-director of the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (R.E.E.E.S) Undergraduate Think Tank at Howard University.

She works, writes and teaches primarily on the social construction of race and culture as it relates to privileged and marginalized communities in Central and Southeast Europe. In her research, Rucker-Chang studies how literature and film contribute to culture and nationalist identities, especially in the creation of minority and majority groups. Her other research interests include émigré and exile literature and the application of post-colonial thought to post-socialist contexts. 

Rucker-Chang is a writer and editor on culture, marginalization and media in Southeast Europe. She is co-editor and contributor to Cultures of Mobility and Alterity: Crossing the Balkans and Beyond (2022), co-author of Roma Rights and Civil Rights: A Transatlantic Comparison (2020), and co-editor of and contributor to Chinese Migrants in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (2011). Her research has appeared in academic journals including Critical Romani Studies, Interventions: Journal of Post-Colonial Studies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Slavic and East European Journal and Slavic Review.  

Rucker-Chang earned her B.A. in Russian area studies and East Asian studies from Wittenberg University and her M.A. in Slavic studies, Russian studies and post-communist studies from the Ohio State University, where she also earned her Ph.D. in Russian literature, Slavic literature and culture.

Courtesy of Sunnie Rucker-Chang

Pronouns: she/her

Expertise: Slavic and East European languages, African and African American studies, race and culture in Central and Southeast Europe, Roma rights.

Languages: English, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian

Location: Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio

Email: rucker-chang.1@osu.edu (ruckersu@ucmail.uc.edu)

Twitter: @slavprofsrc