Janice (Jan) Gross
Jan Gross is Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages, emerita. She earned a B.A. and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages at the University of Michigan and an M.A. from Ohio State. Her teaching and research focus on how theatre and dialogue enable us to 鈥渋magine the other.鈥 Her work on Algerian-born authors (i.e., Slimane Bena茂ssa, Mohamed Kacimi, Ma茂ssa Bey, Fellag, Fatima Gallaire and Albert Camus) appears in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, French Review. Other essays examine trauma and terrorism, postcolonial memory and identities, exile and diaspora, Camus as Algerian, and Islam in the French-speaking world. Her translation with Daniel Gross of novel, The Last Night of a Damned Soul (Grove Press, 2004) presents one of the first works of fiction on 9/11 to be penned by a Muslim author. She traces local-global connections in the link between Algeria's legendary Muslim leader, Emir Abd el-Kader, and the namesake Iowa town of Elkader in 鈥淐elebrating A Muslim Hero, in Iowa鈥 . Her Tutorial 鈥淎mericans in Paris: Through the Looking Glass鈥 considers how Paris shaped and was shaped by African-Americans. Her longstanding writing collaboration with Heather Lobban-Viravong explores the experiences of confronting their differences in age and skin color. More Than Skin Deep: Conversations at the Color Line invites others into the conversation on interracial perspectives in the dia/Blog pages: and through a performed version.