Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Founding Director of the Critical Theory Program at UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984. She has taught at several universities, including Columbia University in 2011-14. She is known for her contributions to queer and feminist theory, social and political philosophy, literary and cultural criticism.
Her books include Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004);Precarious Life (2004), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015). Her future projects include work on Kafka, Benjamin, and Freud.
She is also active in gender and sexual politics and human rights, anti-war politics, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace and their committee on Academic Freedom. She was most recently the chair of the Committee for Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibilities for the MLA and presently serves on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She received the Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt (2012) in honor of her contributions to feminist and moral philosophy, the Brudner Prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies, and the Research Lecturer honor at UC Berkeley in 2005. In 2014, she was awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry. In 2015 she was elected as a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.