Margery Arent Safir is professor of Comparative Literature and English at The American University of Paris where, during the past decade her research has focused on the interaction of knowledge and imagination, most particularly in science and literature. She has played an active role in bringing together distinguished figures in the world of science and the arts, both in print and in colloquia, in Europe and the United States.

Since 1992 she has been a member of the Centre des Recherches Interuniversitaire sur les Champs Culturels d’Amérique Latine (CRICCAL), Université de Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle, and on its Bureau de direction. She was Associate Director of the International School of Theory in the Humanities from its founding in 1995 until 1999. She sits on the organizing committee of the CRICCAL’s biannual international colloquium, and is currently coordinating AUP’s partnership with La Cité de la Réussite, Europe’s most important university forum, for its annual event at the Sorbonne. Her most recent works include two interdisciplinary collections for which she was both editor and contributor, Melancholies of Knowledge: Literature in the Age of Science (1999) and Connecting Creations: Science-Technology-Literature-Arts (2000). She is currently working on a book-length study of science and imagination in the literary works of 19th- and 20th-century authors in the Americas and Europe.