A native of Virginia and alumna of Collegiate School in Richmond, Dr. Hall graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with majors in French and English. She spent a semester her junior year in Grenoble, France. After graduating, she was awarded an exchange fellowship at the École Normale Supérieure and spent a year in Paris. She then returned to the US to do her graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she earned an MA and PhD with distinction. Her thesis focused on feminist theory and the works of Hélène Cixous. She taught at the University of West Georgia and Ithaca College before returning to her home state to join the faculty at the University of Virginia in 2015. She has published articles on Hélène Cixous, various French and francophone women writers, and teaching methodology, and she is the co-author of a fifth-semester textbook, Textures: pour approfondir la communication orale et écrite (Yale UP 2018). She serves at course chair of French 2010 and regularly teaches introduction to translation and courses focusing on women's literature. In the Fall of 2024, she was named Director of UVA's Institute of World Languages.
BA, Amherst College, 1995
MA, UW-Madison, 1998
PhD, UW-Madison, 2003