Shoshana Felman

Shoshana Felman is the Woodruff Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Grenoble, France, in 1970, and her B.A. and M.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Felman joined Yale University faculty in 1970, advancing to full professor and holding the Thomas E. Donnelley Professorship of French and Comparative Literature until 2004, when she transitioned to Emory University.

Her research specializes in 19th and 20th century French, English, and American literature; literature and psychoanalysis; philosophy; trauma and testimony; law and literature; feminism; theater and performance; and Holocaust studies. Felman has authored and edited numerous influential works that have shaped interdisciplinary scholarship. Key publications include Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, co-authored with Dori Laub, M.D. (1992); The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (2002); What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference (1993); Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture (1987); and The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages (2003). She edited Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading-Otherwise (1982) and published The Claims of Literature: A Shoshana Felman Reader (2007). Earlier books in French, such as La "Folie" dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Stendhal (1971), La Folie et la chose littéraire (1978), and Le Scandale du corps parlant: Don Juan avec Austin, ou la Séduction en deux langues (1980), laid the foundation for her career.

In 2010, Felman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recognizing her significant contributions to literary theory, psychoanalysis, trauma studies, and the intersections of law and literature. Her innovative approaches continue to impact academic discourse on witnessing, sexual difference, and the ethical dimensions of reading and performance.

Professional Email: sfelman@emory.edu