Dominick LaCapra
   Bryce & Edith M. Bowmar
     Professor in Humanistic Studies
     Cornell University
 

Thinking Across Disciplines
            "Disciplinarity, Cross-Disciplinarity, and the Problem of Violence"
                 Tuesday, 29 March at 11:00 a.m.
                    Rose Hills Theatre, Smith Campus Center

            "History and Literature"
                    Thursday, 31 March at 11:00 a.m.
                    Rose Hills Theatre, Smith Campus Center
 

Professor LaCapra will have several more engagements with the Pomona College student, faculty and alumni communities.
 
 

The Thompson Lecturer for 2004/2005:

Dominick LaCapra has a longstanding reputation as one of the most innovative and prolific historians in the profession who writing has influenced work across the humanistic and social-scientific disciplines.  He received his B.A. from Cornell and his Ph.D. from Harvard.  LaCapra began teaching in Cornell's History Department in 1969 and is currently Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies.  At Cornell he has received the Clark Award for distinguished teaching, has served as Director of the Society for the Humanities, and, since 2000 has been Director of Cornell's highly respected School of Criticism and Theory.  At Cornell, he also has a joint appointment in the department of Comparative Literature, is a member of teh graduate fields in Romance Studies and German Studies, and is a member of the Jewish Studies Program.  He has been a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Earlier in his career, Professor LaCapra's interventions had a major impact on the field of European intellectual history especially in relation to literary criticism, continental philosophy, contemporary critical theory and historiography.  His numerous books on these topics include Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher (1972), A Preface to Satre (1978), "Madame Bovary" on Trial (1982), Modern Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives (1982, co-edited with Steven L. Kaplan), Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (1983), History and Criticism (1985), History, Politics, and the Novel (1987), Soundings in Critical Theory (1989).

More recently, Professor LaCapra has related his specialization in history and critical theory to Holocaust studies, psychoanalysis, and the emergent field of trauma studies.  He published another series of books including an edited volume, The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance (1991) and Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (1994), History and Memory after Auschwitz (1998), History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies (2000), Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001), and History in Transit: Experience, Identity, and Critical Theory (2004).