Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 25. Chapters: New Historians, Post-Zionists, Judith Butler, Benny Morris, Hillel Kook, Ilan Pappé, Shlomo Sand, Tanya Reinhart, Amira Hass, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Danny Rubinstein, Simha Flapan. Excerpt: Judith Butler (born 24 February 1956) is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is the Maxine Elliott professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley. Butler received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. In the late-1980s she held several teaching/research appointments, and was involved in "post-structuralist" efforts within Western feminist theory to question the "presuppositional terms" of feminism. Her research ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, mourning and war. Her most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy, exploring pre- and post-Zionist criticisms of state violence. Butler was born in Cleveland, Ohio to a family of Hungarian and Russian ancestry. Her mother was raised in Orthodox Judaism, later turning to Conservative Judaism, and finally to Reform Judaism; Butler's father belonged to a Reform Synagogue since his childhood. As a child and teenager, she attended both Hebrew school and special classes on Jewish ethics where she received her "first training in philosophy." Butler stated in a 2010 interview with Haaretz that she began the ethics classes at the age of 14 and that they were created as a form of punishment by her Hebrew school's Rabbi because she was "too talkative in class," "talk back," and was "not well behaved." Butler also stated that she was "thrilled" by the classes and chose to focus on Martin Buber. She also encountered the writings of Kant, Hegel, and Spinoza during these special sessions. Butler studied philosophy at Yale University, receiving her B.A. in 1978 and her Ph.D. in 1984. Her dissertation was subsequent