Lorraine Janzen Kooistra FRSC is a Canadian professor of English and a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). She is the founding co-director of TMU's Centre for Digital Humanities. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018.

Early life and education

Janzen Kooistra is a first-generation Canadian.^[1] She was born to parents John G. Janzen and Irma Marie Koop and has three siblings.^[2]

Janzen Kooistra earned her Bachelor of Arts, with honours, from Brock University and her Master's degree and PhD from McMaster University.^[3]

Career

While earning her Bachelor of Arts, Janzen Kooistra earned a job with the Lincoln County Board of Education as a teacher from 1973 to 1975. From there, she earned a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto between 1977 and 1979. Beginning at the turn of the 1990s, Janzen Kooistra worked as an assistant professor at Nipissing University.^[4] In 1999, Janzen Kooistra published The culture of Christina Rossetti: Female poetics and Victorian contexts, which was an analysis of poet Christina Rossetti's work.^[5] Two years later, while working at Nipissing University, Janzen Kooistra was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research.^[6] She continued her examination into Rossetti's poetry by publishing Christina Rossetti and illustration: a publishing history in 2003.^[7]

Janzen Kooistra was hired by Ryerson University in 2005 to serve as the Chair of their English department.^[8] She served in this role until 2008 before becoming the English department's first Undergraduate Program Director in 2010.^[3] While in her role as Chair, Janzen Kooistra was appointed to the North American Victorian Studies Association Advisory Board in 2009 and again in 2012.^[9] In 2010, Janzen Kooistra helped found Ryerson's Centre for Digital Humanities^[10] and later the Children's Literature Archive.^[11]

While working as Ryerson's Undergraduate English Program Director in 2012, Janzen Kooistra was awarded the Provost's Experiential Teaching Award for her teaching style^[12] and was a recipient of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations Teaching Award.^[13] That year, Janzen Kooistra published Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: the Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture, 1855-1875.^[14][15]

In 2016, while working as the principal investigator on "Visualizing the Unmarked: The Social Politics of Fin-de-siècle Periodicals and Digital Humanities Mark-up Practices,"^[3] Janzen Kooistra was awarded the 2016 President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by Ryerson University.^[16]

In 2018, Janzen Kooistra was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for her work in 19th century literature.^[17][18]

Selected publications

The following is a list of publications:^[19]

• Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing : the Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture, 1855-1875 (2014)
• Victorian poetry and the book arts (2010)
• Learning to see in the dark (2003)
• Christina Rossetti and illustration: a publishing history (2003)
• The culture of Christina Rossetti: Female poetics and Victorian contexts (1999)