Faculty Spotlight: Q&A with Eman Ghanayem, 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 English Eman Ghanayem, 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 Eman Ghanayem, and I am an assistant professor in the Department of English. My teaching themes center Indigenous, refugee and prison narratives—and, more broadly, issues of belonging, displacement and violence in settler colonial contexts. My classes so far have examined Indigenous writings, Palestinian literature, carcerality and abolition and decolonial feminisms and love. In the future, I plan to teach courses on racial humor and comedy, memoirs written in contexts of war, comparative diasporas, fantasy and folktales and the rhetorics of anti-colonial activism.

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

A: Being Palestinian and experiencing displacement through my parents greatly shaped my intellectual work, politics and commitments. Growing up, I dreamt of becoming a professional teacher and writer, eventually traveling across the world to seek different venues of knowledge that could fortify that path. I needed to learn how the world works, how we function as humans, the feelings we have, the languages we use, our capacity to commit wrongs and the magical ability we unlock when healing deep wounds. There is so much power in learning these powerful secrets and in unlearning acts that cause harm to exist in circles.

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

A: Beyond USD’s fences, and certainly within the lives of some of its people, there are realities shaped by violent forces that wish to create borders and toxicity between us. I resist the assumption that social justice is an optional cause. It is a necessity for our collective existence. I have lived through forms of state-sanctioned violence, but I have also seen it unleashed on loved ones and communities I care about. My work is wedded to these realities, and my focus is to protect my students, improve their lives, and learn with them resiliency, hope and discipline to face injustice.

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

A: I am excited to learn more about this place—not only USD but San Diego, too. I am invested in finding ways to support local Indigenous issues. I am interested in planning events and creating spaces for global Indigenous and refugee studies and solidarities. I am also looking forward to getting to know the students and my colleagues more. Over the years, I have seen mentors I respect and adore excelling in planting seeds, bringing people together and creating communities of care. I aspire to apply their teachings and communalism here at USD.

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

A: My curriculum is adaptive and always growing. I came to USD with the intention of co-contributing to global Indigenous and refugee studies that challenge a beautified image of the U.S. and the world. Teaching here so far has shown me openings for many future courses. For instance, I am interested in teaching a class on manifestos as a political literary form. I am also interested in teaching Arab and Arabic literature by queer and diasporic authors. I would love to teach a class on hope as the means to withstand apocalyptical moments. All to say, being here has reactivated my imagination, and I cannot wait to fulfill these ideas and more.

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

A: I am working on different research projects at the moment. The first is my book project that addresses issues of displacement, nationalism and belonging within comparable and interconnected settler colonial contexts. To some extent, my other projects relate to that theme, each focusing on certain colonial acts while analyzing literary practices that resist them. These projects are invested in studying humanistic and anti-colonial worldviews that can decolonize our relationship to places, nations and how we define ourselves and shape our views of others.

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

A: I don’t know about unique or interesting, but I can be embarrassingly unserious. I’m good at making terrible jokes. I like to read information about random and silly things—usually while lying on the floor like a starfish at three o’clock in the morning. I will never fully understand why, but I’m incapable of taking naps. I watch a lot of bad sitcoms. I think cats hate me.