After his Ph.D. at Yale University, John Lyons taught French and Italian at Dartmouth College, where he also served as chair of the Comparative Literature Program. During part of that time he was also Director of the Centre Américain du Cinéma in Paris. In 1987 he joined the Department of French at the University of Virginia, becoming Commonwealth Professor in 1992. His research has been funded by the NEH, the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. In 2007 he was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.