Janice (Jan) Gross is Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages. She earned a M.A. from Ohio State University and a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in French Language and Literature. Her research explores the ways that theatre is used to express identity among contemporary francophone authors. Her research on Algerian playwrights living in Paris considers questions of gender and national identity, the problematic of terrorism, the experience of exile, and the role of Islam. Recent articles have appeared in Theatre Journal (“The Tragedy of Algeria: Slimane Benaïssa’s Drama of terrorism”) and Modern Drama (“Performing the Future of Memory: Algerian Playwrights in France”). She has also published several articles on Fatima Gallaire, including an interview. She has most recently translated with Daniel Gross a novel by Slimane Benaïssa, The Last Night of a Damned Soul (Grove Press, 2004), which presents the events of 9/11 through the eyes of an Arab American computer designer whose identity crisis leads him to radical Islam. At the upper-level, her courses on Contemporary Francophone Cultures and Modern Francophone Theatre examine diverse representations of identity in the French-speaking world.

Professor Susan Ireland grew up in England, and taught in France for eight years before coming to the United States in 1982. She has a B.A. in French and Latin from the University of Bristol (England), a "maîtrise" in Applied Linguistics from the University of Paris, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in French Literature from the University of Colorado. Her research interests include contemporary French fiction, Quebec women writers, the Algerian novel, and the literature of immigration in France and Quebec. She has published articles in these areas and has edited Immigrant Narratives in Contemporary France and Textualizing the Immigrant Experience in Contemporary Quebec with Patrice Proulx. She is also an editor of The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature. At the upper level, she teaches Introduction to French Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (French 313) and offers seminars on contemporary authors from all areas of the French-speaking world, especially North Africa, Quebec, France, Lebanon, and Vietnam. She has also served as Academic Director of the University of Colorado program in Bordeaux. See also Recent Publications.

Associate Professor Philippe Moisan is from Brittany. He holds a D.E.U.G. in Literature and Visual Arts, and a Licence in Literature from the University of Caen (Normandy). He also has a M.A. and a PhD from Wahington University in Saint Louis. His research and teaching focus on fiction on the 19th and the 20th-century, and he is particularly interested in the concepts of the end of Humanism, and of the birth of Modernity. His book, Les Natchez de Chabeaubriand: l'utopie, l'abîme et le feu, published by Champion in France, addresses the beginning of this humanist crisis in Chateaubriand's work. He has also published and presented papers on Chateaubriand, Hugo, Zola, and Robbe-Grillet. At the upper level, He teaches Introduction to French Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (FRN 313), several seminars on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Literature, and special topics, including Urban Myths in Francophone Literature (co-taught with Susan Ireland), Masculinity in French Literature. He has also led several guided readings such as Existensialisme et Nouveau Théâtre, Les Misérables et le XIXe Siècle, Nouveaux territoires romanesques du XXIe siècle.

David Harrison is the Director of Grinnell’s Center for International Studies (see http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/cis/ and an Associate Professor of French. He holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the literature and culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France, and he has published on Saint-Simon, Molière, Ninon de L’Enclos, and Scudéry. His work has appeared in Seventeenth-Century French Studies, Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, and The French Review. He has also contributed chapters to In Memory of Elaine Marks: Life Writing, Writing Death (UW-Madison, 2007) and Options to Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers (MLA, forthcoming). He is currently doing research on the relationship between seventeenth-century sociability and memory. At Grinnell, he teaches at all levels of instruction; his advanced semina rs include “Power and Resistance in 17th and 18th C entury France,” “Comedy in French Literature,” and “Molière: Text and Performance from the 17th to the 21st century.”

Daniel Gross, Lecturer in Modern Languages and Director of the Alternate Language Study Option (ALSO) Program, has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and an M.A. from the University of Illinois, A.B.D. University of Michigan. He specializes in language self-instruction and pedagogy. French 103, 101, 102, 221, and 222.

Andrea Magermans, Instructor in French, holds a BA from Washington University in St Louis and an MA from New York University. She is currently finishing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation is on female epistolary writing in the 18th century, both in fiction and in personal correspondence. In addition to letter writing, her research interests include early-modern conceptions of the Self and the Other, travel narratives, and the evolution of the novel.

Christian Kittery is the current French assistant in Grinnell this year. Christian comes from Reunion Island, a French overseas territory situated in the Indian Ocean near South Africa and Madagascar. He studied in the English department at Reunion Island University and has a Masters in "Interculturalité: Civilisations et arts comparés du monde anglophone". His studies also focused on environmental and gender issues in Africa and in contemporary society.