Isabella Huberman is a settler-scholar who specializes in Indigenous literature and cinema of Quebec. She completed a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Manitoba, a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto, and a PhD on Indigenous literatures in Quebec at the University of Toronto. She is the recipient of the 2022 John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature.

Isabella is the author of Histoires souveraines: poétiques du personnel dans les littératures autochtones au Québec (Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2023). The book studies a corpus of contemporary Innu, Cree-Métis and Wendat literature examining how these authors tell (personal) stories – stories of individual experience, of the everyday, of intimate relationships, of eroticism – to elaborate larger visions of Indigenous sovereignty in Quebec. Isabella has co-edited special issues on Indigenous literatures of Quebec and questions of race and colonialism in Quebec cultural production. Her most recent publications engage with deconstructing colonial archives, visiting as methodology and stories of hydro development in Quebec.

Interests

• Francophone Indigenous narrative arts
• Environmental Humanities
• Archives and cinema studies
• Quebec-Indigenous studies
• Decolonial and anticolonial theory
• Research creation

Current projects

• “Power Lines: Reframings of Hydro Power in Indigenous Film and Literature from Manitoba and Quebec”
• “Zines against extractivism: zine-making as DIY method and practice”

I. Books

Histoires souveraines : poétiques du personnel dans les littératures autochtones au Québec, Montreal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, “Expressions autochtones” series. 2023. 280 pages.

II. Edited volumes

With Joëlle Papillon and Isabelle St-Amand (co-editors), “Savoirs littéraires et arts narratifs autochtones,” special issue of Voix plurielles 18.2 (2021): 2-123.

With Isabelle Kirouac Massicotte (co-editors), “Colonialisme et race dans les productions culturelles québécoises,” special issue of Arborescences: Revue d’études françaises 11 (2021): 1-106

III. Articles

“Looking Back in Kewekapawetan : Return After the Flood. Research, Remembrance and Reclamation of a Hydro Story,” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 46 (2023): 280-301.

“From the Floodland: Countering Extractivism, Remembering Relations in Eeyou Istchee,” Studies in American Indian Literatures 34. 3-4 (2022) : 27-49.

“Les spectres de l’hydro chez Tim Whiskeychan et Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau,” Tangence. Revue d’études littéraires 129 (2022): 59-80.

“ ‘Permets-moi de te dire tout ce que tu dois savoir’: enseignement et écoute responsable dans l’essai épistolaire Shuni,” Arborescences: Revue d’études françaises 11 (2021): 91-106.

With Élise Couture-Grondin, “Relations, postionnalités partagées et critiques anticoloniales. Penser les collaborations dans le champ des littératures autochtones francophones,” Voix plurielles 18. 2 (2021) : 102-123.

“Les archives à l’épreuve du temps : les recadrements temporels des courts-métrages de la série Souvenir,” Revue canadienne d’études cinématographiques / Canadian Journal of Film Studies 29. 1 (2020) : 92-111. *Winner of the 2022 Peter Morris Prize, Film Studies Association of Canada

“‘Si ce n’est pas moi’: écrire à la jonction du soi et de la communauté chez An Antane Kapesh et Natasha Kanapé Fontaine,” Études en littérature canadienne / Studies in Canadian Literature 43.1 (2018): 108-127.

“Les possibles de l’amour décolonial : relations, transmissions et silences dans Kuessipan de Naomi Fontaine,” Voix plurielles, 13.2 (2016): 111-126.

“The flowers of Eve : How Baudelaire found his way into feminist science fiction,” Trans – Revue de littérature générale et comparée 18, online, October 26, 2014. URL : http://trans.revues.org/1060

IV. Chapters in books

With Joëlle Papillon, “Les poétiques de la rencontre de l’Autre dans Amun,” in Johanne Melançon, Thierry Bissonnette et Alain Doom (eds), Rencontres, Moncton, Les Éditions Perce-Neige, coll. « Archipel-APLAQA », 2021, pp. 86-104.

With Antony Glinoer, “Jean Richepin de bohème en blasphèmes,” in Patrick Thériault and J-J Hamm (eds), Composer avec la mort de Dieu : écriture et athéisme au XIX^e siècle, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2014, pp. 83-99.

V. Other

Translation. Lettrines 2 by Julien Gracq (excerpt), in The Environmental Futures Reader, ed. Caren Irr, Waltham, MA, Brandeis University Press (forthcoming 2023).

Zine. Paper and digital formats.“Power/Lines: A Research Journey in the Wake of Hydro.”Funded by SSHRC Explore Grant (2021-2022).  https://hydroimpacted.ca/research-posters/

• Polanyi Prize in Literature, 2022-2023
• SSHRC Explore Grant, 2022
• Peter Morris Prize, Film Studies Association of Canada, 2022

Currently accepting graduate students for supervision.