McCarthy completed her PhD at Yale University in 1929 with a dissertation titled The originality of Lucian's Satiric Dialogues, under the supervision of A. M. Harmon.

[1] Barbara McCarthy is mainly known for her work on Menippean satire, and especially for her article 'Lucian and Menippus' (Yale Classical Studies 4: 3–55), an adaptation of her PhD dissertation.

In her article, Barbara McCarthy did identify similar motives, themes and frames between Lucian's writings and the Menippean fragments.

However, she argued that there was no evidence of a close copying of forms and thematic of Menippus' satires by Lucian.

In 2000, McCarthy was commemorated by her former student at Wellesley Lynn Sherr in a talk given at the Classical Association of the Atlantic States meeting at Princeton (29 April 2000).