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 whose theoretical approach aligns with the concept of culture from below. She predominantly examines the functions and responses of contemporary literary and cultural production in Quebec and Canada to interpersonal and sociopolitical struggles, focusing on vulnerability narratives, poetics of care, and representations of belonging, responsibility, and relationality, critical notions for thinking through minoritized and vulnerable experiences, as well as for teaching a language such as French in a minority setting. She has published in English and French on those topics in several articles and book chapters.

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 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 as well as advanced research skills, comparative literature, and comparative stylistics. Her pedagogical approach focuses on student-centered, inclusive, and 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 a broad variety of 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.