Cathy Caruth

Cathy Caruth (born 1955) is Class of 1916 Professor of English at Cornell University, where she holds appointments in the departments of Literatures in English and Comparative Literature. After graduating cum laude from Princeton University, she received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale. Before coming to Cornell, she taught at Yale, then Emory, where she developed an archive of Holocaust testimony, co-organized a national interdisciplinary conference on trauma, and significantly expanded the graduate program in Comparative Literature.[1]

Professor Cathy Caruth
Dr. Caruth in her office, Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2017)
Born	Catherine Lynne Caruth December 1955
Known for	Unclaimed Experience (1996)
Title	Class of 1916 Professor of English
Academic background
Education	Princeton University (1977) Yale University (1988)
Alma mater	Yale University
Thesis	'Empirical Truths and Critical Fictions: Locke, Wordsworth, Kant, Freud' (1989)
Influences	Geoffrey Hartman Paul de Man Adorno Freud Jacques Derrida Robert Jay Lifton Shoshana Felman Barbara Johnson Jean Laplanche Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Walter Benjamin Hannah Arendt Jean-Francois Lyotard
Academic work
Discipline	Psychoanalytic theory
Sub-discipline	Cognitive psychology Cultural Studies Sociology of culture Animal Studies
Institutions	Yale University (1986-1995) Emory University (1995-2011) Cornell University (2011-present)
Notable students	Amy Ziering Jeannie Suk R. Clifton Spargo
Main interests	Psychological trauma Traumatic memories Collective trauma Traumatic stress Historical trauma Post-traumatic stress disorder Freud's psychoanalytic theories Deconstruction Literary theory Political theory Empiricism Jewish history Kant

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:

[T]he first to realize the importance of trauma theory for the humanities. Working closely with psychoanalysts and psychologists 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 on Psychoanalysis, 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. [2]

For a good discussion of Caruth's highly influential work on trauma theory, see The Trauma Question. Routledge. 2013. ISBN 978-1-136-01502-1., 4–5, and The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century. Harvard. 2002. ISBN 978-0-674-00931-8., 173–182, n.3.