Eminent American Philosopher Judith Butler Returns as CalArts Spring 2018 Theorist in Residence

CalArts School of Critical Studies Visiting Artist Judith Butler in 2015 | Photo by Rafael Hernandez

This Spring, CalArts welcomes back respected gender theorist and philosopher Judith Butler as Theorist in Residence in the School of Critical Studies’ Aesthetics and Politics program. She will be delivering two new public lectures in Los Angeles this week, as well as teach a masters’ seminar at CalArts later in the semester.

On Wednesday (Jan. 24), Butler presents “Critique, Crisis, and the Problem of Violence” at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, as part of CalArts’ WHAP! Lecture series. The talk, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:30 pm. For those unable to attend in-person, Butler’s talk will be live-streamed on CalArts’ Facebook page.

On Friday (Jan. 26), Butler’s second lecture, “The Materiality of Mourning in the work of Doris Salcedo” will be held at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles. Both lectures address the theme of interpreting nonviolence.

Butler’s large body of work is a cornerstone of gender identity politics and has been a driving force in the fields of political philosophy, ethics, and feminist, queer and literary theory. One of her most groundbreaking books is Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993), which presents her theory of gender performativity.

Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory, and the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley.

Butler’s first residency at CalArts was in Spring 2015. Read more about her previous tenure and lectures in the blog post CalArts Theorist in Residence Judith Butler Lectures on Acts of Resistance.