Judith Halberstam

Judith Halberstam

Judith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, (born 15 December 1961) is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. She (also sometimes using male pronouns) has made contributions as a gender and queer theorist and author.

Halberstam primarily focuses on the topics of tomboys and female masculinity and has published a book titled after the concept. In this work, she famously discusses a common by-product of gender binarism, termed "the bathroom problem". This outlines the dangerous and awkward dilemma of a perceived gender deviant's justification of presence in a gender-policed zone, such as a public bathroom, and the identity implications of "passing" therein.

Halberstam earned her BA with a major in English, at the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. She received her MA from the University of Minnesota in 1989, and her PhD from the same school in 1991.

The Queer Art of Failure argues that failure can be productive, a way of critiquing capitalism and heteronormativity. Using examples from popular culture, like Pixar animated films, Halberstam explores alternatives to individualism and conformity. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, looks at queer subculture and proposes a conception of time and space independent of the influence of normative heterosexual/familial lifestyle. Halberstam has been nominated three times for Lambda Literary Awards, twice for her most widely-known non-fiction book, Female Masculinity. She coedits with Lisa Lowe, "Perverse Modernities," a book series with Duke University Press.