Faculty Spotlight: Q&A with Alexandra Goldych, PhD

The USD College of Arts and Sciences (the college) hired 14 new faculty members in three distinctive themes – Borders and Social Justice, Technology and the Human Experience and Climate Change and Environmental Justice – this past fall.

As part of the university's commitment to academic excellence, the college endeavored to assemble a cohort of teacher-scholars who offer a strong contribution to the diversity and excellence of USD through teaching, scholarship, service and collaboration.

This spring semester, the college is featuring each new faculty member with a Q&A series every week. Each spotlight highlights their professional journeys, academic expertise, research and their goals for fostering academic and personal growth within the USD community. 

Learn more about Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies Alexandra Goldych, PhD, her background and her passion for research and teaching in the Q&A below.

Cluster-Theme: Borders and Social Justice

Q: Please share your name, title, department and the subjects or courses you will be teaching at USD.

A: My name is Alexandra Goldych, and I am an assistant professor of French in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Literatures at USD. I am currently teaching third-semester French and will be teaching across the curriculum in French here, including second-semester French next semester, as well as new courses I will be introducing, such as The Franco-Arab World and another on queer representation in French and Francophone culture. 

Q: What key experiences have shaped your career and where you are today? 

A: One of the key experiences that shaped my career was studying abroad. When I studied abroad as an undergraduate student in Dijon, France, I realized just how much I love the French language and culture. This experience really opened my eyes to the world, and I realized that I wanted to be able to do what my professor had done for me, for others. So, I started looking into graduate school, and now, here I am! 

Q: What sparked your interest in the Borders and Social Justice cluster-hire theme, and what drew you to this particular focus? How are you contributing to that focus in your work here?

A: The cluster of Borders and Social Justice is one that is not just integral to my research work, but integral to the core of the human experience. We live in a world of constructs; things like race, gender, and borders are all constructed concepts that govern the ways that we move throughout the world — and we use language to negotiate these constructs. So when teaching French language and culture at all levels, my aim is to encourage my students to recognize systems of power and constructs and to examine how language can be harnessed to address our lived experiences.

Q: What aspects of joining the University of San Diego community are you most excited about?

A: I have only been here for about two months, and already, I have been able to attend so many wonderful events and meet so many people across campus. What is really exciting to me about USD is the opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on campus; I cannot wait to work with friends and colleagues from across campus during my time here. Also, the seemingly unending list of events being offered on campus gives me the opportunity to be a lifelong learner and to continue to open my mind to new ideas. Teaching is as much about sharing knowledge as it is about learning new things, and the USD environment fosters that really well.

Q: How do you envision your course curriculum contributing to the academic and personal growth of USD students?

A: If I can call back to my response about my cluster theme, my sincere hope is that my classes, at their base level, will help my students open their minds to the world around them. I know many people enrolled in third-semester French might feel like they are just there to tick a box for a requirement, but my goal in any class is to allow space for reflection about the realities we live in. This is equally true in my upper-division classes, where I will teach on themes like race, gender, sexuality, language and colonialism. 

Q: What current research projects are you working on or interested in, and how do they align with your cluster theme? 

A: I am currently drafting an article that explores how Franco-Algerian writers use their writing to create alternate realities. When we talk about France’s colonial history with Algeria, women’s stories are often overlooked and simplified in the traditional “history.” So, writers turn to autofiction (fiction of the self) to try and retell their stories in their own words, creating new histories, or “autohistories.” This project examines how gender and geography live within books in order to create physical spaces for these stories, so it questions what borders are and how people seek justice for their own stories. This article is closely related to my in-progress book project, which is all about gender, geography and language in Franco-Algerian novels.

Q: What’s an interesting or unique fact about yourself that others might not know?

A: A fun fact about me is that I really enjoy playing disc golf! It is a sport that I discovered in graduate school, and I love being able to get outside and play and bring my dog along! I think it’s really important to have hobbies to get me off campus and out of my laptop, and that is one of mine.