Dr. Dominique Hétu (she/her) is a bilingual Canadian (French-English) scholar trained in Canadian literatures who has been with the Department of Francophone Studies and Languages since August 2020. Promoted to Associate Professor in January 2025, 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 refined over years of research and teaching, enables her to explore 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 the experiences of minoritized and vulnerable populations, as well as for teaching a language like 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 in literary and cultural studies, French language, and second-language acquisition in a minority setting since 2008. She has taught these topics, including advanced research skills, comparative literature, and comparative stylistics. Her pedagogical approach focuses on student-centred, inclusive, and accessible teaching, learning, and assessment practices that foster good relationships. As such, she is committed to teaching transcultural and transnational content that highlights the necessity of considering diverse gender, race, and class-based perspectives across historical periods, spaces, and forms.

Dr. Hétu is currently revising her first monograph, which explores the transformative and damaging manifestations of care in contemporary literature in Québec (to be published by Presses de l’Université de Montréal in 2026). She was also the lead editor for the edited collection Living and Learning with Feminist Ethics, Literature, and Art, (U of Alberta Press, Nov. 2024). In addition to these projects, she published her first poetry collection, Il n’y aura pas de safety word (Hurlantes éditrices, March 2025). This creative work delves into fat phobia and fat-shaming issues. Looking ahead, Dr. Hétu’s research and creative work shift from a politics of care to a politics of the ordinary. This transition will enable her to continue examining the critical and literary manifestations and configurations of vulnerability and precarity, a topic with which she has been deeply engaged throughout her academic career.  She is also a co-researcher on a successful SSHRC Insight grant (2024-2029, 340K) titled “L’Âge du milieu: une réinvention féministe et littéraire de la ‘midlife crisis’ au 21e siècle” with colleagues from U of Alberta (PI), U de Montréal, and U of Guelph.