After finishing my bachelor’s degree in Physics at Kalamazoo College, I enrolled in FLE (français langue étrangère) courses at l’Université de Strasbourg with support from the Bourse Jean et Marie-Louise Dufrenoy through the SPFFA (Société des professeurs français et francophone d’Amérique). I completed my Masters in French at Michigan State University in 2018.

I became interested in reproductive health in late 20th century France early in my PhD, inspired by archival research in the Comic Art Collection at the MSU Library where I found a bande dessinée (BD) on contraception and abortion. Published just a few years after the legalization of abortion in France, the BD made me wonder; if abortion and contraception were legal, why write a BD about it? Thus began years of archival research and analysis of cultural productions and narratives of family planning.