Biography
Dr. Ashley Byczkowski teaches all levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced French, French and Francophone cultural history, and French and Francophone literature and cinema at Niagara University. In Dr. Byczkowski’s classroom, students engage with materials and topics that push them to reexamine their place in the world and leave with a better understanding of their cultural identities and the role that culture biases play in their day-to-day experiences.
In her free time, Dr. Byczkowski loves spending time with her partner, Will, and their Great Pyrenees, Dauphine (who is featured here on Girl with the Dogs!). Being an avid knitter and hiker, on the weekends she’ll either be trail running in the woods or knitting and watching Great British Bake Off or Lord of the Rings.
FOCUS OF TEACHING
- French language acquisition for second language and heritage speakers
- French and Francophone literature and film
- History of the French speaking world
CURRENT RESEARCH
Dr. Byczkowski’s research stems from an interest in written representations of the self and feminine relationships in women’s writing from the entire French-speaking world. Her first book project “Feminine Selfhood: Mothers and Daughters in Francophone Women’s Life Writing” takes a psychoanalytic and feminist approach to analyzing life writing and examines the psychological role of the mother-daughter relationship on the author’s construction of self in her life writing.
Recent publications:
- “Derridean Deconstruction and Modernist Writer-Sons,” Journal of Modern Literature, 46.1 (Fall 2022)
- “French Colonization of New France (Present-Day Canada),” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World. New York: Routledge, June 2022.
- “Lin, Lana. Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer” New York: Fordham University Press.” Penumbr(a): A Journal of Psychoanalysis and Modernity, vol. 1, no. 1 (2020).
CURRENT INVOLVEMENT
- Faculty Liaison, NUSTEP French Program
- Faculty Advisor, French Program
- Committee member, Committee on College Teaching & Learning
- Committee member, Women Studies Committee
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
- Ph.D. French Language and Literature, State University of New York at Buffalo
- M.A. French Language and Literature, State University of New York at Buffalo
- B.A. French, Spanish Minor, Niagara University, summa cum laude