Professor Bennett is a literary historian, an associate professor of French, and director of the USC Francophone Research and Resource Center.  

At the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Professor Bennett explored testimonies from the Visual History Archive researching the act of writing under threat. She focused on Holocaust literature and writing by survivors for 20 years, particularly writers who continued to pursue their craft while facing oppression, occupation, and deportations in the throes of World War II. One such writer, Max Jacob, was a contemporary of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Amedeo Modigliani and is considered an important link between symbolism and surrealism.