Joan DeJean, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Joan DeJean, Trustee Professor Emerita of Romance Languages in the School of Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, and renowned scholar of 17th- and 18th-century French literature,  died on December 2 of ALS.  She was 75 years old. 

Dr. DeJean was born in Opelousas, Louisiana and grew up in a French-speaking family.  She received her B.A. in 1969 from Tulane (Newcomb College) and earned her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1974, where she studied with Sterling Professor of French Georges May.  Her first teaching position was at the University of Pennsylvania, where she  received a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1977.  She then taught French literature at Princeton and Yale before returning in 1988 to the University of Pennsylvania as Trustee Professor of Romance Languages, with affiliations in English and Women’s Studies.  Dr. DeJean remained at the University of Pennsylvania from 1988 until her retirement in 2022.  
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