Welcome!

Who am I?

A little bit about my career and background:

I am currently teaching at Binghamton University, as a lecturer. BU is part of the SUNY system. In the past, I have taught in the past at Syracuse University, Brown University, Montclair State University, the College of Staten Island, Cornell University, and Ohio Wesleyan–and I am experienced in teaching all levels of French, from 101 to advanced courses, writing classes for first-year students, history survey courses, literature as well as gender studies classes.

I am from Strasbourg, France, right on the border with Germany, a small region known for its gastronomy and chaotic History. With its two millenia of existence, Strasbourg, a hub of the Rhine Valley’s Renaissance movement, is also a modern capital with its humor, europtimism, and a vibrant art  and theater scene.

I hold degrees in History and French/French Studies: a BA and MA in History from the University of Strasbourg–one of France’s oldest and best state schools–, a MA from Syracuse University, and a MA and PhD from Brown University.

I am passionate about mentoring and advising students, teaching in a classroom that is set up around my students’ lives and concerns, in a way that is relevant to the position of French as a world-language, but also with an inclusive pedagogy that reflects my work on gender and race, and my concern with making higher education more accessible to all.

I am also an enthusiastic collector of Kodak cameras–I have over 60 of them, ranging from the late 19th century to the 1980s. I am interested in the overlap of popular culture, engineering ingenuity, and visual studies theory that surrounds Kodak’s most famous cameras, its Brownie series, which became the first mass-marketed camera in the world in the 1890s. It speaks to intersecting issues of class and consumption that are at the heart of the market for travel journals in the 19th century, and so in many ways, this interest informs and feeds off of my work on female travel journals.

Teaching Experience

In Teaching, you will find a description of the various classes and workshops I have taught, along with my teaching statement, students feedback, and sample syllabi of classes. 

Advising, Mentoring and Administrative Duties

In the tab Leadership and Community Projects, you will find a selection of the programs and projects I have worked on and managed in the past few years, and what they have brought me in terms of experience in and out of the classroom.

In my past teaching roles, I have parlayed this experience to effectively advocate for students in crisis, advise students going abroad, and to help promote languages in education, as well as advocate for a more inclusive education, either in language classes (by making material more inclusive for example), or by serving as a resource for gender education and diversity and inclusion discussions.

Research Interests

My research concentrates on women and minorities in France, from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. My PhD dissertation, entitled “The Good Woman Abroad: Female Travel and French Citizenhood, 1860-1910,” tackles the question of citizenhood, race and gender in France.

In the tab Research, you will find detailed portraits of the women I worked on for my dissertation, as well as several ongoing and past research projects.

Check out also my podcast, on material culture, pop culture, and race and gender in the long 19th century under the tab The Transatlantic Notebook. Nested in this tab, you will also find the page “French Politics”, which I am starting as of April 2022, and which will contain commentaries on French politics from the point of view of an historian, literary critic, and pop culture teacher.

 

   

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