Gerard P. Lavatori

Dr. Gerard P. Lavatori is a Professor of French at the University of La Verne's College of Arts and Sciences. He serves as Interim Associate Dean of Curriculum, Scheduling, and Student Affairs and Program Coordinator of the Liberal Arts major. Previously, he held leadership roles as Modern Languages Department Chair and Interim English Department Chair.

• Bachelor’s Degree in French from Boston College
• M.Ed. in Reading from the University of La Verne
• Master’s and Ph.D. in French from Brown University

His research focuses on postcolonial francophone literature, psychoanalytic approaches to literature, and Critical Disability Studies in global literary contexts. His work spans topics from Rabelaisian economic satire to 20th-century Franco-Belgian fiction analysis.

Lavatori has published extensively on Amélie Nothomb’s narratives, 18th-century French epistolary novels, and African postcolonial literature. His recent scholarship (2018–2019) examines body shaming in Nothomb’s fiction, while earlier works (2014–2016) analyze animus possession in Les liaisons dangereuses and colonial resistance in Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood.

He is also an amateur oboist performing with Southern California community groups.