Professor Grenier was trained in Polish language and literature at St. Petersburg State University, Russia, and later specialized in Russian literature, with a minor in Polish literature, at Columbia University. She joined the Department of Slavic Languages in 1991.

Prof. Grenier taught Russian language courses at Hunter College of the City University of New York and Columbia University before she came to Georgetown. At Georgetown she has taught Russian and Polish language course at all levels, as well as courses in 19th-century Russian literature in both English and Russian.

Professor Grenier's research interests include issues of gender, Russian women writers, and moral questions in literature. She is the author of Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony and is currently working on a book-length study on narratives of adultery in Russian ltierature.