Catharine Mason is Associate Professor of English at the Université de Caen—Basse Normandie, France. Combining studies in literature, linguistics, and anthropology, her work focuses on oral poetry and song. Specialist of Victoria Howard, Chinookan poet and informant to Melville Jacobs in 1929-30, Mason is especially interested in poetics as a social and cultural phenomenon. Her papers and publications include works on Native American myths, Southern American English, ethnopoetic methodologies and Bob Dylan’s poetic achievement. She teaches classes on English as a world language and medium for cultural expression as well as seminars on language, music studies, and ethnopoetics.