My B.A. was in French literature and culture from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York (1968). My M.A. and Ph.D. are in Film history and criticism from the University of Iowa, where my special interests were in French and American film. My doctoral dissertation (1979) was dedicated to the films that the French filmmaker Jean Renoir produced in the United States during the 1940’s. The dissertation was a critical study of the changes in Renoir’s concept of space as a medium of expression during that decade; a second volume traced the production history of Renoir’s work in the context of the French exile community in Hollywood during World War II.

A profile of me and my work was published in 2002 in the Goethe-Institut’s magazine for staff, Goethe Intern. (Kristine Koch, „Menschen bei Goethe - Vom Weißen Haus ins Goethe-Institut: William Gilcher,“ Goethe Intern, Nr. 1, 2002).