Barbara Johnson

Barbara Johnson (born 1947) is an American literary critic and translator. She is currently a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Frederic Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. Her scholarship has incorporated a variety of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives-including deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and feminist theory-into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature. 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. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism