Catherine Prendergast

Biography Prendergast received her B.A. from Columbia University in 1990 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1997. Her research focuses on the intersections of social and literary, cultural movements as well as the spread of the English language.

Prendergast received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 to support research for her book, The Gilded Edge, which investigates the circumstances surrounding the Carmel-by-the-Sea writer colony suicides of Nora May French, George Sterling, and Carrie Sterling by cyanide ingestion.

Personal life and family Her father, Kevin H. Prendergast, was the chair of Columbia's astronomy department known for his work in the field of many-body systems. Her uncle, Robert Prendergast, was a coxswain for Columbia's rowing team who painted the blue and white "C" over the Spuyten Duyvil cliff and later a professor of immunology at Johns Hopkins University.