Annie Dutoit was born in Switzerland in a family of prominent classical musicians. After her secondary studies in classical languages and civilizations (Greek and Latin), she moved to the United States and received a B.A. in comparative literature from Princeton University, an M.A. in journalism from New York University and a Ph.D in French and romance philology from Columbia University in New York. Her dissertation focused on the interaction between politics and aesthetics in anti-Semitic writings in France. She has held faculty positions in various American universities, among which Barnard College in New York and more recently, Arizona State University where she taught courses in literature and European intellectual history.