Cathy Caruth (born 1955) succeeded Jonathan Culler as Class of 1916 Professor of English at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

, where she holds appointments in the departments of Literatures in English and

Comparative Literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

. After graduating ''cum laude'' from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, she received her Ph.D. in

from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. Before coming to Cornell, she taught at

, then Emory, where she developed an archive of

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

testimony, co-organized a national interdisciplinary conference on trauma, and significantly expanded the graduate program in

. Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. has described Caruth as “one of the most innovative scholars on what we call trauma, and on our ways of perceiving and conceptualizing that still mysterious phenomenon.” According to Jonathan Culler, she was "the first to realize the importance of trauma theory for the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

. Working closely with

psychoanalysts PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

and

psychologists A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

to bring techniques of literary interpretation to bear on questions about the meaning of survival, and the nature of witnessing, she edited two historically important issues of ''

American Imago ''American Imago'' is an academic journal established in 1939 by Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs. It seeks to explore the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary cultural, literary, and social theory, while also considering issues related to anthropol ...

'' on

Psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

, Culture and Trauma. Exploring trauma as a model for thinking about relations between history and experience, her books have made her a leader in this field which she partly created.” For a good discussion of Caruth's highly influential work on trauma theory, see , 4–5, and , 173–182, n.3.

Works

Authored

* * * *

Edited

* * co-edited with Deborah Esch,

References

External links

* Emory University faculty 1955 births Living people American academics of English literature Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Cornell University faculty 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American women academics {{US-nonfiction-writer-stub