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 “imagine the other.” Her work on Algerian-born authors (i.e., Slimane Benaïssa, Mohamed Kacimi, Maïssa 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 Slimane Benaïssa's 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 “Celebrating A Muslim Hero, in Iowa” http://dmreg.co/1m4REmU. Her Tutorial “Americans in Paris: Through the Looking Glass” 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 https://www.atthecolorline.com invites others into the conversation on interracial perspectives in the dia/Blog pages: https://atthecolorline.com/blog and through a performed version. https://atthecolorline.com/performance