Katherine Blouin is a 12th generation French settler from Québec city. She is the lead editor of Everyday Orientalism. Her publications include Le conflit judéoalexandrin de 38-41: l'identité juive à l'épreuve (2005), Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta under Roman Rule (2014), The Nile Delta: Histories from Antiquity to the Modern Period (editor, 2024) and The Routledge Handbook of Classics, Colonialism, and Postcolonial Theory (coedited with Ben Akrigg, 2024). She is currently working on a book project entitled Inventing Alexandria. Her fellowship research project is titled Dystopian Ruins, Trusted Simulacra: Classics, Archaeology, and the Construction of Modern Alexandria and Toronto. Katherine is one of our 2025-26 JHI Faculty Research Fellows.
What are your main research interests and what excites you most about them?
I am first and foremost a historian but depending on the context, I also identify as a Classicist, an Egyptologist, a Papyrologist and an Archaeologist. What interest me the most is how power and resistance operate through times and places, and what the past tells us about the present we are living through. My main area of research is ancient Egyptian history, but I also work on the roles Orientalism and narratives about the ancient Mediterranean and West Asian worlds play in the global contemporary, including in settler colonial contexts such as Canada.
What project are you working on at the JHI and why did you choose it?
I am working on a project that studies the relationship between Classics, archaeology and the British colonization of Toronto and Alexandria in Egypt. It brings together three of my main areas of expertise (History, Classics and Archaeology) and two cities I know intimately as places I live (Toronto) and work (Alexandria) in. I would say that this project chose me more than I chose it. I see research as a scholarly but also intuitive process. This particular project took shape organically and when that happens, I know this is a path worth following.
How has your JHI Fellowship experience been so far?
It has been marvelous! I am extremely grateful for the caring and lively community the JHI is offering me. To be surrounded by such a group of like-minded, and stimulating, students and colleagues is all the more so heartwarming and inspiring given the challenging times we are in (in this regard, this year’s theme, dystopia and trust, couldn’t be more timely!).
Why do you believe the humanities are important?
I firmly believe that without the Humanities, there is no University. Critical Humanities are the antidote to totalitarianism. Humanities scholars decipher power; they tell stories that help us humans make sense of our (individual, communal, species’) place in the world through times and places; they are expanding our imaginations and fostering generative world-makings. The fact that the Humanities are increasingly under attack globally is a testimony to their power as custodians of essential yet, for those in power, inconvenient truths.
Can you share something you read/watched/listened to recently that you enjoyed/were inspired by?
I am still processing the essential read that is One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. I am in awe of Rosalía’s Lux, a powerful, anti-AI exploration of life, death and meaning that is born out of her study of many female saints’ lives. I was also lucky to see Leanne Betasamosake Simpson perform her new album Live Like The Sky and blown away by Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet (Jessie Buckley is absolutely astounding in the role of Agnes).
What's a fun fact about you?
I am into drawing, pottery, and printmaking. Not sure whether this is a fun fact per se, but I can assure you that making art is fun!