Judith Butler

Judith Butler, an American poststructuralist philosopher who has worked in the fields of political philosophy and ethics, advanced feminist philosophy to a more progressive level, particularly toward the end of the 1980s, by challenging the traditional assumptions underlying the Western-centered concept of gender; while contributing to poststructuralist and postcolonial studies, she also became one of the pioneers of queer theory. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984 and became a professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California. “My aim is to challenge certain stereotypes imposed within the boundaries of gender, challenge existing views on the masculinity and femininity of gender,” Butler’s book *Gender Trouble* has sold over 100,000 copies in various languages and has become a foundational reference work on gender in the social sciences.