Dominick LaCapra is an American-born historian of European intellectual history, best known for his work in intellectual history and trauma studies. He served as the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies at Cornell University, where he is now a professor emeritus.
Career
LaCapra received his B.A. from Cornell and his Ph.D. from Harvard. He began teaching at the Cornell University Department of History in 1969. LaCapra's work has helped to transform intellectual history and its relations to cultural history as well as other approaches to the past. His goal has been to explore and expand the nature and limits of theoretically informed historical understanding. His work integrates recent developments in critical theory, such as post-structuralism and psychoanalysis, and examines their relevance for the rethinking of history. It also explores and elaborates the use in historical studies of techniques developed in literary studies and aesthetics, including close reading, rhetorical analysis, and the problem of the interaction between texts or artifacts and their contexts of production and reception. In addition to its role in the field of history, LaCapra's work has been widely discussed in other humanities and social science disciplines, notably with respect to trauma theory and Holocaust studies. At Cornell, where he is now professor emeritus, LaCapra has held joint appointments in the departments of History and Comparative Literature. He served for two years as Acting Director and for ten years as Director of the Cornell Society for the Humanities. He is a senior fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory; of which he was associate director from 1996–2000 and director from 2000-2008. LaCapra is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies
Writing History, Writing Trauma
History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory
History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence
History, Literature, Critical Theory
Understanding Others: Peoples, Animals, Pasts
Edited books
With S. L. Kaplan, Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives
The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance
Articles
"Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 60, No. 1, March 1988
"History, Language, and Reading: Waiting for Crillon," The American Historical Review Vol. 100, No. 3, June 1995
"Equivocations of Autonomous Art" Critical Inquiry Vol. 24, No. 3, Spring 1998
"Resisting Apocalypse and Rethinking History"
Other
Rethinking History 8, no. 4, a volume focused on LaCapra’s work, includes an invited essay by him and four other essays discussing his career and role in the profession.
