Many have described Varda Burstyn's ideas and work as "ten years ahead of the curve," and, indeed, her work has had remarkable predictive accuracy. This is a very brief overview of it.

For many of her publications, and references to her work in other media, see see her Bibliography and Filmography and Film Studies.

Environment, Science, Artificial Reproduction and Genetic Engineering (1969-present)

In 1969 Varda became the youngest staff member of the then brand-new Pollution Probe at the University of Toronto. Her connection to environmentalism has informed her writing, as well as her activism, ever since. In 1983 her "New Ideas in Sickness and Health " was broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio's national award-winning documentary program "Ideas". It was a two-hour series that looked at the challenging issues of environmental illness and iatrogenic disease. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Varda had become increasingly interested in reproductive and genetic technologies. She wrote for many media (radio, film, academic and popular journals) on these subjects, as well as being the principal author of the National Action Committee's Brief, "A Technological Handmaid's Tale, " to the Royal Commission on Reproductive Technology. Her article "Breeding Discontent, " first published in Saturday Night, was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards in 1993, was reprinted in Reader's Digest and has been widely anthologized — as have several of her other articles in this field (see Selected Works). She has appeared on CBC national television and radio news, been a participant in debates on the Discovery Channel, and worked in a consultative capacity on two film series on reproductive and genetic science for the National Film Board of Canada. From 1996 to 2004, she served as Vice-Chair of the board of Greenpeace Canada.

Today, environmental concerns are at the heart of Varda's work as she writes more broadly on the politics of technology, on water and on the health impacts of many aspects of environmental degradation. With Magnus Isacsson, she is co-writing a feature documentary film looking at the extent to which the dystopian visions of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984 have come true today, a film with wide environmental concerns. Her article "The Future Foretold ", dealing with the same subjects, appeared in The Empire Reloaded (The Socialist Register, 2005, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds, Merlin, London, 2004). In the last two years, she has published three articles on a number of subjects connected to the impacts environmental health impacts, degradation has on children. Two were for the Childhood in America Series, edited by Sharna Olfman and published by Prager Press: "Techno-Environmental Assaults on Childhood in America " (with Gary Sampson) in Childhood Lost: How American Culture is Failing our Kids (2005), and "Toxic World, Troubled Minds" with David Fenton, in No Child Left Different (2006). The most recent article is "A World Fit for Children," in Child Honouring: How To Turn This World Around, edited by Raffi Cavoukian and Sharna Olfman, also from Praeger (2006).

Her first work of fiction, Water Inc., a political-environmental thriller, was published in the spring of 2005. Her second in the series, Double Blind, which takes the politics and economics of persisant organic pollutants for its material, is forthcoming in 2007.

 

Sexuality and the Politics of Sexual Expression (1980s)

Varda was an important participant in the North American debates about sexuality, pornography and political strategies during the 1980s. Her edited anthology, Women Against Censorship (1985), was a non-fiction best seller, and was nominated for the H.L. Mencken Award for Civil-Liberties Writing (U.S.). Her work on sexual representation in film and the visual arts has appeared in Mother Jones, Canadian Art, Fuse, Fireweed, Sojourner, Cineaction and Canadian Forum, on CBC radio, and on Paper Tiger Television's media literacy series (New York)

 

Political Theory and Politics (1980s)

In 1983, Varda published "Masculine Dominance and the State" (The Socialist Register 1983). This was her first theorization of the way in which a masculinist gender order is crystallized in government and state structures, personnel and policy, and the article has been used in graduate political science programs in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Australia. She was a founding member and co-manifesto writer, with Judy Rebick, of "Women Against Free Trade" in 1988. Since then Varda has developed her analysis of government and the politics of the neo-liberalism and neo-conservativism in all her her other areas of work, and in particular her ideas about democratizing government have been developed in her work in public policy and public administration (see Selected Works).

Her current major film project, co-writing with Magnus Isacsson the feature documentary film and companion book entitled DOUBLETHINK: Orwell and Huxley, Then and Now brings together global political analysis with her concerns and insights in all her other areas of work.

 

Sport, Gender, and Politics (1980s-90s)

In 1986, the three-hour series "Play, Performance and Power" was broadcast by the CBC Radio's Ideas."The Sporting Life," on the politics of steroids in high performance sport, was published in Saturday Night in 1989, and later anthologized for a number of university textbooks in Canada and the United States. "Sport, Gender and Politics: Moving Beyond the O.J. Saga" appeared in The Socialist Register 1996. "Some Political Reflections on Globalization, Ideology, Gender, and Olympic Sport," appeared in Problematizing the Olympic Games, International Centre for Olympic Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 1998.

The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics and the Culture of Sport, (University of Toronto Press) was published in May, 1999, to critical acclaim in the United States and Canada, and it won the Book of the Year Award in 2000 from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. "Women, Sport and Politics," in The Encyclopedia of Women and Sport, Berkshire Reference Works, was published in 2001.

 

Health Policy and Health Care System Reform (1990s)

In the early 1990s, Varda added health policy consulting to her work, and spent the better part of the 1990s in related projects. Her clients have included ministers and ministries of health, regional and municipal health councils, local health services, trade unions, and national health and women's rights advocacy organizations.

 

 

In addition to her writing and consulting, Varda has taught film studies, and has lectured widely in her areas of specialization. An independent scholar as well as a popular writer, her writing has appeared in scholarly publications and popular media in Canada, Great Britain and the United States.
Born in Israel in 1948, and raised in Israel and Canada, Varda Burstyn has also lived in France and the United States. At present she resides in the city of Peterborough, in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario.