Joan DeJean has been Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1988.  Before then, she taught at Princeton and Yale.  She grew up in Louisiana in a French-speaking family and was educated at Newcomb College/Tulane and then at Yale.

She has written extensively about France and the French and about the city of Paris.  Her most recent books include How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City (Bloomsbury, 2014), The Age of Comfort – When Paris Discovered Casual, and the Modern Home Began (Bloomsbury, 2009), and The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (Simon and Schuster/The Free Press, 2005).