I received my B.A. with a major in French and in English, finishing in 1972. As an undergraduate, I was mentored by Inge Kohn and Gérard Agnieray.

Upon completion of my M.A. In French in 1974, I began my doctoral studies in French, with a minor in Philosophy at UNC-Chapel Hill. In 1976, I took a research year at Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Paris and then completed the doctorate in 1979, writing on "The Utopian Vision of Sébastien Mercier."

Fall 1979, I accepted a one-year appointment at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Twenty-eight years later, I am still at Wofford, where I chair a lively and growing department of foreign languages that offers degrees in French, Spanish, German, and Chinese as well as a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies. In 1986-87, I took a leave of absence to be resident director for the Council on International Education Exchange in Rennes, France and in 2003-2004 I was Assistant Dean of the College here at Wofford.

Most recently, I have been pursuing representations of identity in francophone African literature ( "Teaching Hybrid Indentities Creatively: Emigration, Immigration in the Maghrib and Europe") and this fall I will join a panel on "Authenticity in African Literatures" at the conference of the Southern Comparative Literature Association, in Raleigh, NC.

For my fun and games, I ride my bicycle a great deal, bake bread so that I can have a marketable skill when the revolution comes, and I am the program director for an independent and art film society here in Spartanburg.