Carolyn Dean

Field of interest: Cultural and intellectual history of modern Europe; history of gender and sexuality; genocide studies and the Holocaust of European Jewry.

Carolyn J. Dean is Charles J. Stille Professor of History and French.  She is a historian of modern Europe with a focus on the twentieth century whose work explores the intersection of ideas and culture, most recently in the context of genocide.  Her latest book, The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Cornell, forthcoming 2019) traces the history of the witness to genocide, tracking the changing representation of what we now call genocidal violence over the last century.  She is the author of five other books that focus on the historical and cultural representation of victims, most recently Aversion and Erasure: The Fate of the Victim after the Holocaust (Cornell, 2010) and The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust (Cornell, 2004).  She has also written extensively about gender and sexuality in France and on the intellectual history of French theory.  She has been the recipient of many fellowships, including an ACLS, a Guggenheim, and others. In 1996 she was awarded Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Council for the Advancement of Support of Education.