Dr. Karl Jirgens

Professor

B.A. (Hons.), (Toronto), M.A., Ph.D. (Distinction), (York)

Contact

CHN Rm 2103 Karl Jirgens
519 253 3000 ext. 2310
jirgens@uwindsor.ca

Teaching/Research Areas:

contemporary literature
Canadian literature
creative writing

Biography

Karl Jirgens is a specialist in literary theory, contemporary literature with a focus on Canadian literature, and creative writing and publishing. He has served as Head of the English Department, and as Chair of the Creative Writing program at the University of Windsor. He is the author of Bill Bissett and His Works (ECW), Christopher Dewdney and His Works (ECW), Strappado (Coach House Press), and A Measure of Time (Mercury Press). He has edited a book on Canadian painter, Jack Bush (Coach House) another on poet, Christopher Dewdney (Wilfrid Laurier University Press), and co-edited an issue of Open Letter magazine (with Beatriz Hausner, on collaborative expression). His scholarly articles on digital culture and performance, as well as contemporary and postcolonial literature appear nationally and internationally in print and digital journals such as WI (Canada), Canadian Literature (Canada), Literary Review of Canada (Canada), La Revista Canaria de Etudio Ingleses (Spain), Q/W/E/R/T/Y (France), Open Letter (Canada), and World Literature Today (USA). His scholarly essays are also published in essay collections such as CanLit Across Media (Edited by Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod), as well as Scholarly Anthology, Trans/Acting Culture, Writing, and Memory: Essays in Honour of Barbara Godard, (Edited by Eva Karpinski, Jennifer Henderson, Ian Sowton, and Ray Ellenwood).

He wrote the entry on Jacques Lacan for the Dictionary of Literary Biography edition on Twentieth Century European Cultural Theorists. His fiction and poetry appear in Canadian journals such as The Tamarack Review, Only Paper Today, Impulse, Descant, The Journal of Canadian Fiction, Impulse, Inter, Filling Station, and internationally in Fiction International (USA), The Ontario Review (USA), Tyuonyi (USA), UNIverse (Germany), Essex (USA), the International Symposia of Concrete & Visual Poetry (Australia), and Offerte Speciale (Italy), among others. His fictional works have been anthologized by Coach House Press, Black Moss Press, Mercury Press and Texteditions. His theatre/performance works have been presented nationally and internationally including at the Ultimatum Fest in Montreal and at the INTER-Festival in Quebec City. Karl Jirgens founded and edited Rampike, the international literary journal of contemporary art, writing, and theory, from 1979 to 2016. The entire 36 year print-run is now available through the U Windsor scholar’s portal c/o the Leddy Library (Google; “about Rampike” and enter the university portal or go to; https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/rampike/about.html ). In addition, Jirgens is a long-time practitioner and grand-master of the martial art of Tae Kwon Do.

Recent Publications

Editing

2014-2015 Edited, FOUR ISSUES of Rampike magazine (two issues per year): Vol. 23.1, (published) – 80 pp. Vol. 23.2, (published) – 80 pp. Vol. 22.1, (published) – 80 pp. Vol. 21.1, (published) – 80 pp. Vol. 24.1 (at the press) – 80 pp. ISSN #: 0711-7647 Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Scholarly Articles

Jirgens, Karl. “Medium as messenger: Amin Rehman’s typographic interventions.” In Amin Rehman: A is For. Co-published by Articite Gallery Windsor, and McIntosh Gallery University of Western Ontario. 2014. pp. 17-23. 2015. ISBN: 978-0-9696562-1-0. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. [print].

Jirgens, Karl. “Digital Mediations: Janet Cardiff and George Büres Miller’s Schizo-Phenomenologies.” Wi: Journal of Mobile Media. Vol. 9, #1, 2015. http://wi.mobilities.ca/karl-jirgens-digital-mediations-janet-cardiff-an... [WEB].

Jirgens, Karl. “Beckett and Beyond: Ergodic Texts, the Neo-Baroque, and Intermedia Performance as Social Sculpture” pp. 63 – 78 (in New Literary Hybrids in the Age of Multimedia Expression: Crossing Borders, crossing genres. Marcel Cornis-Pope, Editor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. 2014. ISBN 978-90-272-3463-6. [published]

Jirgens, Karl, "Language and Interdisciplinarity: (Re-)contextualizing Nicole Brossard’s Picture Theory. In Scholarly Anthology, Trans/Acting Culture, Writing, and Memory: Essays in Honour of Barbara Godard, pp. 59-76., Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013, Editor(s) - Eva Karpinski, Jennifer Henderson, Ian Sowton, & Ray Ellenwood., 10,000 word essay. ISBN13: 978-1-55458-839-8 [published].

Jirgens, Karl. “Medium as messenger: Amin Rehman’s typographic interventions.” pp. 17-23. In Amin Rehman: A is For. Co-published by Articite Gallery Windsor, and McIntosh Gallery University of Western Ontario. 2014. ISBN: 978-0-9696562-1-0. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. [published].

Short Stories

“Fluid Mechanics: Cold Vodka: Cold Blood.” In Fiction International (U.S.A.). Edited by Hal Jaffe. [forthcoming].

“Unspoken Odyssey.” In Alecart (Romania) edited by Liana Vrajitoru Andreasen. [published, on-line, p. 134]. http://issuu.com/alecartiai/docs/webalecart14

Poem

“A Dialectic Poem in the Making”. Flat Singles Press [published, on-line: Apr. 13, 2015]

http://flatsinglespress.blogspot.ca/2015/04/

Scholarly Conference Presentations

Nov. 6, 2014. Brock University. “Digitally Speaking: Developments in Electronically Enhanced, Language-Based, Inter-Media Performance.” [completed].

June 4th, 2015. Concordia University. "Digital Mediations: Temporal phenomenologies of Janet Cardiff and George Büres Miller’s interactive walking tours, as archival events." [completed].

Live Theatre Productions

No Great Mischief. Executive Producer of stage adaption of play by David Young on Alistair MacLeod’s novel No Great Mischief. In cooperation with the University of Windsor School of Drama. Feb. 27, Feb. 28, and Mar. 1, 2014. Jackman Theatre, University of Windsor.

BookFest Windsor – “26 Reasons to Wear a Hat” – Theatrical Inter-media Performance featuring Theatre Arachnid Group. Artcite Gallery, Windsor. Oct. 24th, 2014. [completed]

Professional Publisher’s Presentation and Round Table

BookFest Windsor, Capital Theatre, Windsor, Ontario. Coordinator and Host for presentations and roundtable featuring 5 publishers and 5 nationally recognized authors