François-Xavier grew up in Provence. He has spent much of his life reading, writing, and teaching, which means a conversation about a bottle of wine has a habit of wandering into literature, history, an image, a passage he recalls from an archive somewhere. He still gets to a vineyard whenever he can, often just to spend time among the vines, talking to the people who run it.
His academic life has taken him through the Sorbonne, Georgetown's campus in Doha, the American University of Beirut, and now the University of Central Florida, where he directs the Medieval and Renaissance Studies program. His books are published by Routledge, Manchester University Press, and Palgrave. He is slated to become president of the Interstice Institute. It's part of what has led him here — brought in quietly, the way it comes up over an actual dinner.
