Maxine Elliot Professor Emer. in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They are best known for their 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Their theories of the performative nature of gender and sex were highly influential within feminist and queer theory. They are active in several human rights organizations and presently serve on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. They were the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-13), was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2018, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. In 2020, they served as President of the Modern Language Association. In their last book The Force of Nonviolence they show how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality.