Dr. Frans Carl Amelinckx was born on 23 September 1932 in Sint Niklaas, Belgium, and spent his childhood in Lille, France with his grandparents. After their deaths, he enlisted in the Belgian Armed Forces and served in Korea. Afterwards, he moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where he met his wife, the future Dr. Carol Cedar Amelinckx. They were married in Pollock, SD in 1959.

Dr. Amelinckx completed a B.S. with High Honors at Northern State Teachers College in Aberdeen, SD in 1964, his M.A. in French in 1966, and his Ph.D. in French Literature in 1970 from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA. Under the guidance of Dr. Alexandre Aspel, he completed his dissertation, “Les structures artistiques et les structures de l’imaginaire dans l’itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem de F.R. de Chateaubriand”.

Dr. Amelinckx worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Iowa while completing his graduate studies, and then moved on to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where, from 1969-1983, he taught as an instructor (1969-70), an Assistant Professor (1970-1975), and finally an Associate Professor (1975-1983), receiving tenure on 18 August 1975.

In 1983, Dr. Amelinckx was hired by the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) as a full Professor and Head of the Department of Foreign Languages, tenured 6 January 1983. In 1987, he was promoted to Professor of French and Francophone Studies, a position he held until his retirement in 2003, after which he became Professor Emeritus. From 1999 to 2002, he was also an Endowed Laborde-Neuner/BORSF Professor in Francophone Studies.

Professionally, in addition to English, Dr. Amelinckx was a native speaker of French, nearly native speaker of Spanish, and could read and speak fluently in German, Italian, and Dutch. Throughout his career, Dr. Amelinckx was a member of a wide variety of domestic and international academic organizations dedicated to the study of literature, the French language, and the teaching of French, among other things.

Personally, Dr. Amelinckx and his wife raised three children (two sons and a daughter), and lived in Lafayette, LA until his death on 28 March 2010.