Faculty Research Fellow
Katherine Blouin (Ph.D. 2007, Université Laval (Québec) and Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis) 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.
Fellowship Project: Dystopian Ruins, Trusted Simulacra: Classics, Archaeology, and the Construction of Modern Alexandria and Toronto
Dystopian Ruins explores how Classics and archaeology were instrumental to the modern European colonisation of Alexandria and Toronto between 1805 and 1914. By examining the underbelly of the supposedly trustworthy stories of civilization and cosmopolitanism associated with and performed in these two cities, this project illuminates the role of Classics and archaeology in the establishment of canonical urban narratives, not only in the public imagination, but also on the Land itself. I suggest that these trusted stories have become symbols akin to Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra that, through their occlusive nature, play a foundational role in the creation of the dystopian Anthropocenic present that both cities are reckoning with.