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Dr. Dominique Hétu (she/her) is a bilingual Canadian (French-English) scholar trained in Canadian literatures who has been Assistant Professor in the Department of Francophone Studies and Languages since August 2020. Dr. Hétu is a specialist in comparative literary and cultural studies, offering a unique perspective that aligns with the concept of culture from below. This approach, which she has honed over years of research and teaching, allows her to delve into the functions and responses of contemporary literary and cultural production in Quebec and Canada. Her focus is on how these productions reflect interpersonal and sociopolitical struggles, with a particular interest in vulnerability narratives, poetics of care, and representations of belonging, responsibility, and relationality. These critical notions are essential for understanding minoritized and vulnerable experiences, as well as for teaching a language such as French in a minority setting. Dr. Hétu has shared her insights on these topics through numerous articles and book chapters published in English and French.

Before coming to BU, Dr. Hétu completed a postdoctoral fellowship (SSHRC) at the Canadian Literature Centre of the University of Alberta (2017-2020), where she also worked as an Assistant Teaching Professor at Faculty Saint-Jean (French campus). She has been teaching undergraduate courses since 2008 in literary and cultural studies, French language, and second-language acquisition in a minority setting. She has taught those topics and advanced research skills, comparative literature, and comparative stylistics. Her pedagogical approach focuses on student-centered, inclusive, accessible teaching, learning, and assessing practices that foster good relations. As such, she is committed to teaching transcultural and transnational content that speaks to the necessity of considering various gender, race, and class-based perspectives across historical periods, spaces, and forms.

Dr. Hétu is currently in the final stages of a French monograph that explores the transformative and damaging manifestations of care in contemporary literature in Québec. She is also leading the editing process for an upcoming volume titled Living and Learning with Feminist Ethics, Literature, and Art, scheduled for publication with U of Alberta Press in November 2024. In addition to these projects, she submitted her first poetry collection to Hurlantes éditrices, a publisher situated in Montréal. Her poetry collection delves into fat phobia and fat shaming issues. Looking ahead, Dr. Hétu’s research will shift from a politics of care to a politics of the ordinary. This transition will allow her to continue her examination of the critical and literary manifestations and configurations of vulnerability and precarity, a topic that she has been deeply engaged with throughout her academic career.