Dr. Maurice W. duQuesnay was born in New Orleans in 1936. He earned his Bachelors in English and Philosophy at Marquette University and his Ph.D. at Louisiana State University in 1978. He was an English professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, specializing in psychoanalytic criticism and American literature.

Dr. duQuesnay was also the director of the Flora Plonsky Levy Lecture Series. Flora Levy (1904-1981) was the daughter of Mose and Gussie Plonsky Levy, who ran a general merchandise store in Lafayette at the turn of the last century and owned property downtown. Flora Levy worked as the auditor for the First National Bank of Lafayette. She left her estate to the University to fund the lecture series, an annual event that invites distinguished intellectuals in the arts and humanities to give a lecture to the University and community. Past lecturers include writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, psychiatrist Ian Stephenson, and Sophie Freud, granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. The Flora Levy Lecture Series began in 1980. Also funded by the Flora Levy Foundation is the journal Explorations, an interdisciplinary journal of essays on the arts and sciences. Dr. duQuesnay is the general editor of this journal. The journal occasionally publishes lectures from the Flora Levy and George Rodrigue series.