Pucciani, Oreste F.

Biography

Oreste Francesco Pucciani was born in Cleveland on April 7, 1916, the son of a candy manufacturer. He attended the Cleveland public schools and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Adelbert College, Western Reserve University (now Case Western University) in 1939. He took his doctorate in Romance languages from Harvard in 1943. In 1946-47, Pucciani studied in France and Italy on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, meeting Sartre and his companion Simone de Beauvoir. Returning to the United States in 1947, Pucciani lectured at Harvard, before joining the faculty of the University of California Los Angeles as an Assistant Professor of French in 1948. He was became an Associate Professor in 1954, and a full Professor in 1960. He was chairman of the French department from 1961 to 1966, and became emeritus in 1979.

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