Photo credit: Frank London

Adeena Karasick

b. 1965

Current City, State, Country

New York, New York, USA

Birth City, State, Country

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Biography

Adeena Karasick, Ph.D, is a New York based poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of 12 books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein) “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work.” (Mark Scroggins). Most recently is Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas, (The Institute of General Semantics Press: Language in Action, Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018) and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera; Salomé: Woman of Valor CD, (NuJu Records, 2020), and Salomé Birangona, translation into Bengali (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press, Kolkata, 2020). Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking.

The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.

Published Works

Massaging the Medium: Seven Pechakuchas (Institute for General Semantics Press,Language in Action, 2022)
Salomé: Woman of Valor, translation into Bengali; trans. Aritra Sanyal and Paulami Sengupta (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press, 2020)
Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018)
Salomé: Woman of Valor (libretto); Eds. Kate Siklosi and Dani Spinosa (Gap Riot Press, 2017)
Salomé: Woman of Valor / Salomé: Donna di Valore, in dual edition of English and Italian; trans. Pina Piccolo and Serena Piccoli (University of Padova Press, CLEUP, 2017)
Intersyllabic Weft, co-authored with Maria Damon and Alan Sondheim (Moira Books, 2017)
The Medium is the Muse: Channelling Marshall McLuhan, co-edited with Lance Strate (NeoPoiesis Press, 2014)
This Poem: (Talonbooks, 2012)

Author Site

Links to Sample Works

Video Reading

Current Title

Professor, Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt University, New York, New York

Education

Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (ph.D Humanities (1997)
—Specialization: contemporary poetry, post-structuralist and feminist theory. Thesis title: Of Poetic Thinking: A ‘Pataphysical Investigation of Derrida, Cixous and the Kabbalah
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (MA. English, 1991)
—Specialization: Canadian literature, poetry, poetics, feminist theory
University of British Columbia (BA. English, Honors, 1988)

Subject Matter

Genre