Peggy Kamuf papers (Ms.2017.014)

Biographical / Historical

Peggy Kamuf (b. 1947) is the Marion Frances Chevalier Professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She attended Bucknell University (class of 1969) for her undergraduate education in French and English, and then received her PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell University in 1975. Since then, Kamuf has been a professor or visiting lecturer at universities such as Miami University, UC San Diego, University of Nottingham, Université de Paris 8, and Kingston University, as well as held a directorship position at the Collège International de Philosophie. Along with receiving several honors and awards for her work in literature, history, and literary theory, Kamuf has published numerous articles, lectures, and books such as Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Heloise (1982), Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship (1988), The Division of Literature, or the University in Deconstruction (1997), Book of Addresses (2009), and To Follow: The Wake of Jacques Derrida (2010). Kamuf is not only a leading translator of Hélène Cixous, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Derrida's works, but she also studies, and writes and lectures about, Rousseau, Woolf, Baudelaire, and Stendhal.