Trent University | French and Francophone Studies
| Research Areas: Lettres Françaises with a specialization in Canadian and Indigenous Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies; Queer Theory; De/Postcolonial and Settler Colonial Studies |
Zishad Lak is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of French and Francophone Studies and the School for the Study of Canada at Trent University. Her interdisciplinary research spans energy humanities, queer theory, and decolonial, postcolonial, and settler colonial studies. Lak’s doctoral dissertation offers a comparative, intercontextual analysis of contemporary novels written in French and English by Indigenous, Black, Euro-settler, and diasporic authors across what is now Canada. Her current research explores the intersections of race and ecology in literary portrayals of Canadian suburban landscapes.
Selected Publications
Lak, Zishad and Pierre-Luc Landry. “On the Road in ‘French America’ Métissage and Discursive Self-Indigenization in Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues.” Indigenous Studies Review, Volume 53, Issue 1, 2023–2024, pp. 57–67.
This article examines discursive and narrative strategies of métissage and self-indigenization in Volkswagen Blues, a transculturalist novel published in 1984 by Quebecois writer Jacques Poulin. Claims to indigeneity and métissage in the novels do not appear directly, but through the myth of French America; settler colonialism is concealed, Indigenous peoples are relegated to a prehistoric past, and French settler past is implicitly foregrounded as the origin of North America.