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)
Academic work
Discipline	Psychoanalytic theory
Institutions	Yale University (1986-1995) Emory University (1995-2011) Cornell University (2011-present)

Cathy Caruth (born 1955) is a leading theorist in Trauma Studies. She focuses on the languages of trauma and testimony, on literary theory, and on contemporary discourses concerning the annihilation and survival of language.

Caruth's mother, Elaine G. Caruth, Ph.D., was a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic writer who worked for many years with children and adolescents and later with adults.

Caruth graduated cum laude from Princeton University and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale. She taught at Yale, then Emory, where she developed an archive of Holocaust testimony.

She is currently Class of 1916 Professor of English at Cornell University, where she holds appointments in the departments of Literatures in English and Comparative Literature.

Works

Authored

• Empirical Truths and Critical Fictions: Locke, Wordsworth, Kant, Freud. Johns Hopkins UP. 1991. ISBN 978-0-801-89648-4.
• Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Johns Hopkins UP. 1996. ISBN 978-0-801-89619-4.
• Literature in the Ashes of History. Johns Hopkins UP. 2013. ISBN 978-1-421-41155-2.
• Listening to Trauma: Conversations with Leaders in the Theory and Treatment of Catastrophic Experience. Johns Hopkins UP. 2014. ISBN 978-1-421-41446-1.

Edited

• Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Johns Hopkins UP. 1995. ISBN 978-0801-85007-3.
• co-edited with Deborah Esch, Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. Rutgers UP. 1995. ISBN 978-08135-2086-5.