Judith Butler: podcast appearances and interviews

Judith Butler is an American feminist, queer philosopher, and gender studies scholar whose work has significantly influenced fields such as political philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, academic freedom, and literary theory. She has held academic appointments at several universities including Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University, where she received tenure in 1992. In 1993, she joined the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, and became the Maxine Elliot Professor in 1998. At Berkeley, Butler held faculty positions in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and co-founded the Program in Critical Theory in 2007. She established the International Consortium of Critical Theory in 2015, funded by the Mellon Foundation, and holds the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School.

Butler is well known for her influential books Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. These works challenge conventional heteronormative ideas of gender and develop the theory of gender performativity, which has had a major impact on feminist and queer scholarship. Aside from her work in gender theory, Butler has spoken and written extensively on topics including war and non-violence, ethics, public mourning, democratic theory, and contemporary political issues. She has addressed Palestinian struggles, the limits of Zionism, and has advocated for LGBTQIA rights and against anti-gender ideology through international speeches and writings.