Faculty Spotlight: Julia Caroline Knowlton

BY SUE DURIO

Every day I have a sky wider and wilder than any idea of sky, my very own broken stone of love, and keys of memory made out of cloud.

—Excerpt from the poem “Everything I Need” from Julia Caroline Knowlton’s award-winning Life of the Mind

It’s the fortunate person who can carve a career from two lifelong passions.

Adeline A. Loridans Professor of French Julia Caroline Knowlton seems to have achieved just that, creating a sky wider than any she might have dreamed of as a poet and a Francophile.

The educator and author recently earned her second designation as a Georgia Author of the Year, this one for her 2024 poetry chapbook Life of the Mind. The chapbook marks her third foray into what has become her favorite genre, defined as a collection of poems under 24 pages.

“I like this format because the reader can encounter the poems in one or two sittings,” Knowlton says. “It reminds me of a bouquet of flowers or a nice meal that one can experience in an hour or so.”

Knowlton used COVID’s unexpected gift of forced solitude to delve into the theme of aging, something she is grateful to write about as a middle-aged person.

“The book explores coming to terms with what happens to many of us in middle age—some things haven’t worked out like we planned, and yet we can find balance between loss and reinventing loss in ways that allow for new exploration and learning about life,” she says.

One of those areas of new exploration she discovered was solo travel, another theme of the poetry collection. “It is one of the most enriching experiences I have ever done,” she says.

Knowlton won a Georgia Author of the Year award in 2018 for her first chapbook, The Café of Unintelligible Desire, and was a 2023 finalist for the award for her second chapbook, Poem at the Edge of the World. This year, she also published her first book of poems for young children, A to Z Poems for the Very Young

How the longtime Agnes Scott French professor, French and German department chair, and French program director finds time for writing and travel in her busy life is impressive. Early mornings are her creative time, before heading to campus to teach and handle administrative tasks. As a teacher, she looks for ways to encourage students to explore their own writing.

“I work very hard to enhance the traditional study of language with culture from the entire French-speaking world,” she says. “I teach about writers, philosophers and artists outside of France itself, with an emphasis on global learning.”

Knowlton began learning French in the fourth grade and began writing poetry in her early teens. As a teenager, her work was published in Seventeen magazine among other national publications and earned her an Academy of American Poets College Prize. Poetry and French continued to pique her interest throughout her undergraduate years at Duke University.

“I had two main interests,” she says. “One was to enter the publishing world as an editor, but I also was interested in teaching French at the college level.”

An early career stint with Oxford University Press was interesting and exciting, but she missed the French world—speaking it, hearing it, studying it. That’s when she decided to go back to graduate school and dedicate herself to teaching. She earned her master’s degree and doctorate in French from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Years later she fulfilled her desire to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing/poetry through a low-residency program while teaching full time.

Knowlton is now in her 29th year at Agnes Scott, where she teaches French language, literature and culture courses as well as creative writing courses in the English department. She is grateful for the support she has received from the Agnes Scott administration, including Professor Emerita of English and Dean of the College Emerita Christine Cozzens and current Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Rachel Bowser.

“At a lot of colleges, there is not as much support to reinvent yourself academically,” Knowlton says. “You have to stick to the same thing. I am very grateful for the validation I’ve received as a professor and a poet at Agnes Scott.”

“The book explores coming to terms with what happens to many of us in middle age—some things haven’t worked out like we planned, and yet we can find balance between loss and reinventing loss in ways that allow for new exploration and learning about life.”

— Julia Caroline Knowlton, Adeline A. Loridans professor of French

Thank you to the sponsors of the Women’s Global Leadership Conference