Judith Butler

Catherine Rottenberg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 24 Feb 1956
Activity 1976-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Feminist

Activities

Primary

Critical Theorist
Essayist
Philosopher

Other

Lecturer

Resources

Butler's Works

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Judith Butler is one of the most important and influential feminist theorists in the academy today. Her groundbreaking 1990 book

Gender Trouble,

which introduced the notion of “gender performativity,” has subsequently become a classic text in fields as diverse as cultural studies, feminist, queer, and literary theory, and philosophy. Many scholars attribute Butler with having helped found the field of queer theory (along with Gayle Rubin and Eve Sedgwick) as well as with inaugurating a new theoretical framework for thinking about gender identity and subjectivity.

Born in 1956, Butler grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She completed her undergraduate work at Yale University and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1984. Her dissertation traced the reception of Hegel's Phenomenology

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2630 words

Citation: Rottenberg, Catherine. "Judith Butler". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 August 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5173, accessed 24 November 2024.]