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. Though my family is from Boston, my heart first beat in Egypt, where my parents lived for six years and where my brother was born. I spent my childhood and adolescence in a home close to Lausanne, overlooking Lake Geneva and the mountains of Savoy. It is my good fortune to be the daughter of an amateur photographer and guitar player, also a writer of religious and philosophical books, among which A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom (Allen & Unwin 1971; Harper & Row, Pref. Huston Smith, 1986; reed. 2010). Besides a love of travel and non-Western cultures, from both my parents I inherited a passion for ideas and for all activities of the intellect. From Switzerland, I moved to Rabat, Morocco, where I lived for ten years and where my daughter Souleyma was born. My nomadic inclinations then led me to the United States. For several years I lived in Bloomington, Indiana. At Indiana University, I obtained an M.A. in French literature before moving on to Princeton University, where I developed a fascination with French poetry. An article by Proust on Anna de Noailles' Les Éblouissements (1907), identifying her with Moreau's androgynous "Poète persan," inspired my Ph.D. dissertation on this poet and novelist of La Belle Époque. 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, Indiana. I am now retired and live in Southwestern Michigan with my husband and two cats.

Posts by Catherine Perry