RRDANIEL2.ORG > about me (links)
About me...
For most of my life, I have considered myself an inveterate reader, an intellectual, a critical thinker and a writer. When I was twelve, I completed what I thought was a "novel" (a 20-page, hand-written, self-illustrated tale about a Mars expedition gone awry). As an undergraduate, I found my passion for French language, literature and culture while completing a degree in Communications.
After working unhappily in small-market commercial radio for a time, I returned to the University of Alabama to complete a Masters degree in French, then a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University. There, I taught, worked in the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies and served as a research assistant to my dissertation director, the late Claude Pichois, renowned biographer and editor of Charles Baudelaire.
I took my first and only full-time academic position at Saint Joseph's University (or SJU) in 1992, receiving tenure, but not promotion, in 1997. Over about two-and-a-half decades at SJU, I have taught a range of courses, mostly in French or Francophone Studies. I have served in a wide range of roles, from Secretary of the College of Arts and Sciences College Council, Acting Director of Fellowships, and Secretary of Faculty Senate to member of University Council, chair of ad hoc Faculty Senate and University Council committees and Chair of my academic department. (I have done a lot of institutional service.) I also served as Treasurer and as a member of the Council of the International Society for the Study of Time and I have created and chaired panels and roundtable sessions for the conferences and colloquia of a number of professional societies
I continue to teach French, along with interdisciplinary first-year seminars and other courses in SJU's General Education Program and team-taught, interdisciplinary courses in its Honors Program.
Since 2012, have also done a significant amount of informal and self-directed learning via MOOCs and web research as a way to better understand the potential of digital and connected technologies for reshaping higher education.
For more details and more robust information about me, feel free to use the links below.