Author: Catherine Perry

Website

https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineperry2010/

About Catherine Perry

Lausanne, Switzerland, is my birthplace, but not quite where I locate my roots. My family hails from Boston, but my heart first stirred in Egypt, where my parents lived for six years and where my brother was born. I spent my childhood and adolescence in a home near Lausanne, overlooking Lake Geneva and the mountains of Savoy. I am fortunate to be the daughter of an amateur photographer and guitarist who was also a writer of religious and philosophical works, including A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom (Allen & Unwin, 1971; Harper & Row, 1986, with a preface by Huston Smith; reissued in 2010). From both my parents, I inherited a love of travel, a deep interest in non-Western cultures, and an enduring passion for ideas and intellectual pursuits. After Switzerland, I moved to Rabat, Morocco, where I lived for ten years and where my daughter, Souleyma, was born. My nomadic path eventually led me to the United States. I spent several years in Bloomington, Indiana, earning an M.A. in French literature at Indiana University, before continuing my studies at Princeton University. There, I developed a fascination with French poetry. An article by Proust on Anna de Noailles’ Les Éblouissements (1907)—in which he likens her to Moreau’s androgynous “Poète persan”—inspired my Ph.D. dissertation on this Belle Époque poet and novelist. In 2003, I published the book Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in the Works of Anna de Noailles. From 1993 to 2016, I taught French and Francophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Now retired, I live in southwestern Michigan with my husband and our three cats.

Posts by Catherine Perry