Gina Lorenz

Gina Lorenz is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of French & Francophone Studies at UCLA. Her dissertation, entitled “Humanizing the Clash: Cultures of Connection in the Medieval Mediterranean” explores representations of intercultural contact during the Crusades in travel narratives written in French and Arabic. She has studied Arabic at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, for which she received a Foreign-Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship, at UCLA, and most recently at the Qasid Arabic Institute in Amman, Jordan. When she is not researching or teaching French language and culture, she spends time writing songs and performing in a funk/soul band. She holds an M.A. from the Institute of French Studies at NYU and a B.A. in French and a B.A. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas.