Erin Curren received her Ph.D. in May 2005 from the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she had been studying and teaching since 2000. Her enthusiasm for teaching earned her the Jeanne Varney Pleasants Prize in 2002, an award for excellence in pedagogy given to one first-year teaching fellow in the department. She has also been the recipient of several fellowships, including most recently the American Society of the French Legion of Honor Dissertation Fellowship. Her dissertation, “A Novel Reading of Gesture: Nathalie Sarraute's Unspoken Understanding,” explores the use of nonverbal communication in the modern novel and specifically in Sarraute's work. Prior to embarking on her Ph.D. at Columbia, she taught French to students of all ages in the Boston area. She is delighted to return to her alma mater to teach for the year.