A Succinct Biography

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 wild childhood in a home overlooking Lake Geneva and the mountains of Savoy:

This picture, actually a composite of two,
was taken by Whitall N. Perry, in the 1950s
(see a more recent image of Lake Geneva)

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, 1986). My father passed away in November 2005.

Besides a love of travel and of 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. She now lives in Paris.

Shown here in 2008 (view another, much older picture)

My nomadic inclinations then
led me to the United States.

For several years I lived in Bloomington, Indiana, close to Lake Monroe.

At Indiana University, I obtained an MA from the Department of French and Italian, before moving on to Princeton University:

In East Pyne Hall (above), I defended a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures (in what is now the department of French and Italian)

An article by Proust on Anna de Noailles' Les Éblouissements (1907), identifying her with Moreau's androgynous "Poète persan," inspired my dissertation on this poet and novelist of La Belle Époque:

This 1921 photograph belongs to the archives
of the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris

Read more about Noailles on my page dedicated to authors and literature.

And last, though never least,
two late-comers from the woods in 2000:

Tigony (for Antigone)
[missing as of June 2001]

Jamais deux sans trois... Manouche, who adopted us in November 2002 (Golo and Gaya quickly adopted him!)

And finally, Teesha, a wonderful cat who joined us in March 2006 (just as bookish as Golo!). Interestingly, she's the dominant cat of the bunch.

and her son, the bookish Golo
(named in homage to Proust)

relaxing here (can you see his head??)
with his companion Gaya, saved from
Animal Control in fall 2001

Gaya asleep