Barbara Johnson

Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminist theory—into a critical interdisciplinary study of literature. She was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. As a scholar teacher and translator Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France.