Hi there! My name is Graham Jensen, and I’m an Assistant Director and Digital Humanities Research Lead in the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) at the University of Victoria (UVic). I have also worked in the ETCL as a Mitacs Accelerate Industrial Postdoctoral Fellow in Open, Collaborative Scholarship (Arts & Humanities) and Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Postdoctoral Fellow in Open Social Scholarship. Previously at UVic, I was a Limited Term Assistant Professor and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English and an Associate Fellow in the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. In 2021, I was a finalist for the SSHRC Impact Talent Award, which recognizes “the most accomplished social sciences and humanities researchers in Canada.” But I’d like to think I haven’t peaked yet.

My research interests include twentieth and twenty-first-century literatures in Canada, literary modernism, literature and religion, and digital humanities (with more specific interests in such topics as religious and cultural pluralization, unorthodox forms of religious expression in literature, “late” modernisms, cross-border influences between Canada and the US, periodical studies and little-magazine manifestos, epiphanies, poetry about poetry, the Künstlerroman tradition, alcohol in modernist fiction, digital critical archives, digital research infrastructure, and digital humanities publishing and pedagogy, digital research infrastructure, and much more).

I am Principal Investigator of the Canadian Modernist Magazines Project (CMMP). The CMMP serves as a public-facing virtual research platform for those interested in reading, analyzing, or teaching Canadian modernist literature. With the support of more than ten partner institutions in Canada and the United States, the CMMP has digitized a selection of canonical and non-canonical Canadian modernist “little magazines,” beginning with Neith (1903-4), Le Nigog (1918), Preview (1942-44), and First Statement (1942-45).

I am also the author of Unorthodox Modernisms: Varieties of Religious Expression in Twentieth-Century Canadian Poetry (under advance contract with University of Toronto Press). This scholarly monograph is a revised version of my dissertation, “Canadian Modernist Poetry and the Rise of Personal Religions,” which was the recipient of the Dalhousie Doctoral Thesis Award and Malcolm Ross Thesis Award. It examined the notion of “personal religion”—advanced most memorably by American philosopher and psychologist William James—in relation to the mid-twentieth century poetry and unpublished writings of four major Canadian poets: E.J. Pratt, Margaret Avison, Louis Dudek, and P.K. Page. Some of my findings from this study were published in Further Directions in William James and Literary Studies and University of Toronto Quarterly. My research has also appeared in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion, Canadian Digital Humanities, Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities, Pop! Public. Open. Participatory, English Studies in Canada, Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, and other venues. I am also working on a critical edition of Louis Dudek’s multi-volume long poem Continuation (under advance contract with University of Ottawa Press).

As an instructor, I have designed and taught courses in Canadian literature, modern Canadian poetry (ca. 1920-1970), American modernism, Alcohol in Modernist Fiction (British, American, and Canadian), as well as an introductory course on prose and fiction. In the classroom, where I channel the nerdy zeal and curiosity of Rick Steves, I emphasize technology-enhanced and multimodal learning experiences, creative assignments, and interactive, respectful discussions facilitated in a variety of small- and large-group formats.

I like travel, food, founding collectives based around food (R.I.P., Halifax Gastronomic Society!—but hello, Boys Who Brunch), and getting entirely too engrossed in web design, spreadsheets, and Premier League soccer.