From Kingswood to Lyon: A Yearbook’s Special Journey

A University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University, Gass is known for her scholarship on second-language acquisition. She has written or edited more than 40 books and published more than 100 articles. While on campus, she toured Kingswood and revisited the school she and Davis attended 16 years apart.

The yearbook will be featured in Nathalie Zemon Davis et Lyon: Parcours d’une historienne engagée, an exhibition opening September 16 at the Lyon Municipal Archives. The exhibition explores Davis’s long relationship with Lyon, where she first conducted research in 1952, and how her study of the city’s workers, women, artisans, and religious communities helped shape her groundbreaking career.

Davis, who died in 2023 at age 94, became one of the most influential historians of her generation. The exhibition traces her connection to Lyon from her early days as a student through decades of research and friendships with the city’s archivists and scholars.

We are delighted that Davis’s Kingswood years will be part of the story—and grateful to Gass for making sure this meaningful piece of Cranbrook history finds its way to Lyon.

The exhibition will be on view in Lyon September 16 through December 18, 2026. Learn more about the exhibition.