Trent University
MyTrent
  • Academics
    • Undergraduate Programs
    • Graduate Programs
    • Trent Online
    • Summer Courses
    • Continuing Education
    • Study Abroad
    • Academic Calendar
    • Academic Timetable
    • Academic Skills Centre
    • Academic Advising
    • Library
    • Centre for Teaching and Learning
  • Admissions
    • Undergraduate
    • Thinking of Applying
    • Already Applied
    • Received an Offer
    • Accepted My Offer
    • Graduate
    • International
    • Indigenous
    • Returning to Trent
    • Transfer
  • Services & Support
    • Academic Advising
    • Academic Skills Centre
    • Administrative Departments
    • Alumni Services
    • Athletics
    • Campus Security
    • Careerspace
    • Colleges
    • Communications
    • Conferences
    • Financial Aid
    • Financial Services
    • Health & Wellness
    • Indigenous Services
    • Information Technology
    • International Students
    • Learning Support
    • Parking
    • Printshop
    • Recruitment
    • Registrar's Office
    • Residence & Housing
    • Student Clubs
    • TrentU Card
  • Research
    • Research at Trent
    • Research Centres
    • Find an Expert
    • Resources
  • Give to Trent
  • About Trent
    • About Trent
    • Careers
    • Giving to Trent
    • Governance
    • How to Find Us
    • Media
    • News & Events
    • President's Office
    • Staff Directory
    • Trent Facts
    • Contact Us
  • Campus Locations
    • Peterborough
    • Durham GTA
    • Online
  • Future Students
    • Undergraduate
    • Thinking of Applying
    • Already Applied
    • Received an Offer
    • Accepted My Offer
    • Graduate
    • International
    • Indigenous
    • Returning to Trent
    • Transfer
  • Current Students
  • Alumni
  • Trent Forward: COVID-19 Info
  • Apply
  • Visit
  • Give
  • Map
  • Careers
  • Directions
  • Library
  • Site Map
  • Bookstore
Skip to main content Home
  • Peterborough
  • Durham GTA
  • Online
  • MyTrent
MENU
Trent University

Chanie Wenjack School

  • Welcome
  • The Experience
  • Programs
  • Faculty & Research
  • First Peoples House of Learning
  • Douglas Williams Honoured for A Lifetime of Service
  • Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR)
First Peoples House of Learning in the moonlight and Otonabee river

Chanie Wenjack School

  • Welcome
  • The Experience
  • Programs
  • Faculty & Research
    • Full-time
      • David Newhouse
      • Lynne Davis
      • Chris Furgal
      • Michele Lacombe
      • Dan Longboat
      • Don McCaskill
      • Marrie Mumford
      • Paula Sherman
      • Doug Williams
    • Part-time
    • Professor Emerita
    • Elders & Traditional Teachers
    • Ph.D. Candidates
    • Alumni
    • Graduate Teaching Assistant Opportunities 2021-22
  • First Peoples House of Learning
  • Douglas Williams Honoured for A Lifetime of Service
  • Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR)
TRENTU.CA / Chanie Wenjack School / Faculty & Research / Full-time / Michele Lacombe

Michele Lacombe

Associate Professor
​Honours B.A. McGill, M.A. and PhD York
Enwayaang S309
ext. 7845
mlacombe@trentu.ca

Teaching:

a. teaching philosophy: Learning is a life-long process of co-creation, and my students and colleagues teach me a great deal.  I love the challenge of trying to balance critical thinking with a safe space for collectively exploring ideas, sharing stories, and celebrating Indigenous cultures.   Women’s contributions to community matter, as does everyone’s perspective.

b. courses taught:  2300Y (Introduction to post-colonialism), 2485H (Indigenous women’s creative non-fiction), 3485H (Indigenous women’s fiction), 3500Y (Indigenous women), 4300 (Critical theory and Indigenous studies), 6603Y (Indigenous research theory and methods)

Research:

Statement about research:  Research focussed on artistic and creative expression is often described as qualitative research by social scientists, and includes interdisciplinary, arts-based research methodologies informed by social science approaches.  From a humanities standpoint, a wide range of theoretical and empirical frameworks are also available for addressing the place of Indigenous creative arts. 

Research Interests:  What does it mean to say that stories matter? Indigenous women’s voices include many kinds of storytelling, from oral and written versions of family and community history to autobiography, life-writing, poetry, theatre and performance, fiction, and essays.  I am interested in understanding relationships to place and nation as articulated in the arts.

Current research projects:  Literary contributions by First Nations and non-status people from Atlantic Canada and Quebec have not received much critical attention.  Born in Wabenaki territory and raised in Innu territory, I address creative writing by Indigenous women from the East, some of whom work in French as well as in their First Nations language. 

Selected Recent scholarly articles and book chapters:  

  • “Leanne Simpson’s Decolonial Aesthetics: “Leaks,” Leaks, Community, and Collaboration,” in Canadian Literature (accepted, in press)
  • “More than Where the Heart Is: Meeting Places in Wabenaki Poetry by Cheryl Savageau and Mihku Paul, in Journal of Canadian Studies 49: 2 (Spring 2015).
  • "Pimuteuat/ Ils marchent/ They walk: Movement in Contemporary Indigenous Poetry in French,” in Indigenous Poetics in Canada, ed. Neal McLeod. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier UP, 2014.
  • “Embodying the Glocal: Immigrant and Indigenous Ideas of Home in Tessa McWatt’s Montreal,” in Literature and the Glocal City: Reshaping the English-Canadian Imaginary, ed. Ana Maria Fraile-Marcos.  New York: Routledge, 2014.
  • “Indigenous Criticism and Indigenous Literature in the 1990s: Critical Intimacy,” in Unruly Penelopes and the Ghosts: Narratives of English Canada, ed. Eva Darias-Beautell. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2012.
  • “Introduction to Indigeneity in Dialogue: Indigenous Literary Expression across the Linguistic Divides,” (co-authored with Heather Mackenzie), in Studies in Canadian Literature 35.2 (Winter 2011).
  • “`Come on, Dave’: Indigenous Identities and Language Play in Yves Sioui Durand’s Hamlet-le-Malécite,” in Studies in Canadian Literature 35.2 (Winter 2011).
  • On Critical Frameworks for Analyzing Indigenous Literature: the Case of Monkey Beach,” in International Journal of Canadian Studies 41 (2010).
  • “La critique littéraire en amérique du nord: approches anglophones mises en contexte,”  in Littératures autochtones, ed. Maurizio Gatti and Louis-Jacques Dorais.  Montreal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2010.

Selected Recent Conference Presentations:

  • “We were not the savages”: Mi’kmaq and Acadian encounters in Indigenous Writing,” at the NAAAS annual conference, Baton Rouge Louisiana, February 2016.
  • “Relationships between oral, written, and videographic narrative forms in the work of Leanne Simpson,” at the inaugural meeting of ILSA, Six Nations and Brantford, Ontario, October 2015.
  • “Relationships between print, digital and oral storytelling modes,” at the CINSA conference held at Concordia University, Montreal, June 14 2015.
  • “Technologies of Transportation and Metaphors of Movement in Contemporary Innu Literature,” at the “Contesting Canada’s Futures” ICCS conference, Trent University, May 1015; the ACQS Biennial Conference, Montreal, October 2014;  and the “Indigeneity and French Canada Conference,” Centre for Quebec and French Canadian Studies, University of London, UK May 2014.
  • “Some thoughts on Acadianité and Indigeneity: Literary Representations of Self and Other in the Atlantic Region,” at the “Meeting Places” ICCS Conference, Mount Allison University, September 2013.
  • "Approaching Indigenous Literatures in the Twenty-first Century: How Shall We Teach These?"  at the “Teaching Indigenous Literatures” workshop, Dept. of  English and First Nations Studies, Simon Fraser University, February 2013.

Community involvement:

Aki Mashkiki Earth Medicines: training at Peguis First Nation, community work at Peguis, Hiawatha, Sagamok and Wahnapitae First Nations (since 2001).

Chanie Wenjack School logo

Faculty & Research

  • Full-time
    • David Newhouse
    • Lynne Davis
    • Chris Furgal
    • Michele Lacombe
    • Dan Longboat
    • Don McCaskill
    • Marrie Mumford
    • Paula Sherman
    • Doug Williams
  • Part-time
    • Daystar (Rosalie Jones)
  • Professor Emerita
    • Edna Manitowabi
    • Shirley Williams
  • Elders & Traditional Teachers
  • Ph.D. Candidates
  • Alumni
  • Graduate Teaching Assistant Opportunities 2021-22
Trent University logo
Challenge the Way You Think

Trent University respectfully acknowledges it is located on the treaty and traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg. We offer our gratitude to First Peoples for their care for, and teachings about, our earth and our relations. May we honour those teachings.

Peterborough

1600 West Bank Drive
Peterborough, ON Canada, K9L 0G2

Toll Free: 1-855-MY-TRENT

Campus Map

Durham Greater Toronto Area

55 Thornton Road South
Oshawa, ON Canada, L1J 5Y1

Phone: 905-435-5100

Campus Map

Social Media Directory
  • Contact
  • Directions
  • Site Map
  • Accessibility
  • @ Copyright 2023 Trent University