Carmen Mayer is the Director of the French Language Program in the Department of French and Italian at the University of California, Davis. Recent research projects have focused on Zola and adaptation (film, opera, Broadway and other theatrical productions of Zola novels). Publications have appeared in XIX Dix-Neuf, Romance Studies, EXCAVATIO, Romance Languages Annual, Romance Notes, Nineteenth Century French Studies, and Dalhousie French Studies. Current writing projects focus on cultural history and turn-of-the century utopianism in the Quatre Evangiles. Dr. Mayer’s friendship with the AIZEN began many years ago when, as a graduate student, she attended her first AIZEN conference. There she won the 1999 award for the best graduate student paper, which was later published in EXCAVATIO, Volume III (Women in Naturalist Fiction, 2000).