My scholarship spans the fields of twentieth and 21st century French cultural history and film studies. I am particularly interested in documentary cinema. Questions of French national identity, including changing attitudes towards the place of rural, colonial, and postcolonial spaces and people, were at the heart of my first book project, Framing the Nation: Documentary Film in Interwar France. Translated into French as L’oeil de la nation: le film documentaire dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres, this book relies on research in film and manuscript archives to tell the story of public and private actors in France between the two world wars who were making use of documentary film in various ways. The book examines the contribution of documentary films and programs to the portrayal of regional and colonial cultures within broader discourses about the French nation. My second book, Vivre Ici, explores questions of space, place, and viewer experience in contemporary French documentaries. These films depict life in French places such as wilderness, roads, schools, farms, and urban edgelands, and rather than presenting an informational or didactic approach, they instead invite the viewer to experience these places alongside the humans and animals who inhabit them. Other articles and book chapters explore topics such as orality, the politics of food, and propaganda in French and Francophone documentary and fiction film, as well as questions of French colonial history and colonial tourism.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Haverford College, 1989
Master of Arts (MA), Bryn Mawr College, 1991
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Virginia, 1998

BIO

A native of Charlottesville, I obtained my BA from Haverford College and my MA from Bryn Mawr College. I also lived for five years in France (Aix-en-Provence, Vaison-la-Romaine, Gigondas, Paris) before coming back to the US to complete a PhD at the University of Virginia. I taught at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and Colby College before taking up a faculty position in the French Department here at UVA. My extracurricular activities include farming, photography, mountain hiking, and horseback riding.

SELECTED HONORS/AWARDS

All-University Teaching Award, 2012
NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor, 2012-15
UVA College Fellow, 2018-2021