ABSTRACT
Judith Butler (1956-) is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984. Butler understands her interest in philosophy as having derived in part from experiences as a child attending synagogue. “I came to ask certain questions about ethics and human life and violence within the context of a post-Holocaust Jewish education. A lot of my close textual analysis comes out of my understanding of what a reading of the Torah might be” (“Judith Butler 1.22.02,” p. 9).
