Judith Butler (born 1956) is an American post-structuralist
philosopher and philologist, renowned for her contributions to
gender studies and
feminism. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at Berkeley University, California, and also teaches at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee. Her research interests include continental philosophy and critical theory, gender and sexuality, literary and cultural studies, race and ethnicity, as well as political and social thought.