Karen E. Csengeri

1948 - 2025

Karen E. Csengeri

February 1, 1948 - August 31, 2025

Karen E. Csengeri, of Toledo, died August 31, 2025, at Swanton Valley Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center. She was 77 years old.

Born February 1, 1948, in Toledo, Ohio, she was baptized at St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church on Consaul Street in the Hungarian neighborhood of Birmingham. She graduated from McAuley High School and earned her B.A. in Mathematics, magna cum laude, from the University of Toledo in 1970.

After working briefly as a computer analyst at Ohio Bell in Cleveland, Karen returned to graduate school at UT, where she discovered her passion for literature. She received her M.A. in English in 1974 and went on to earn her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1985.

Karen was a distinguished scholar of early twentieth-century British literature, specializing in the work of Thomas Ernest Hulme, the poet, critic, and philosopher known as the father of modern English poetry. Her groundbreaking scholarship culminated in the publication of The Collected Writings of T.E. Hulme by Clarendon Press, the scholarly division of Oxford University Press, in 1994. She was also invited to write the entry on Hulme for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Throughout her career, Karen taught English at institutions in Georgia, and served as a lecturer at the University of Michigan in the early 2000s. She later joined the faculty at the University of Toledo's Jesup Scott Honors College, where she taught "Great Books" courses and received the Honors Faculty of the Year Award. She retired in 2014.

Karen was preceded in death by her parents, Michael and Irene (Karkusz) Csengeri; her sister, Irene (Sam) Fuller; niece, Nanette; her nephew, Patrick (Cheryl); and her great-niece-in-law, Lauren. She is survived by her nephews, Mark, Matthew (Candace), Eric, and William; nieces, Janette (Chris) Elwing, Marlene (William) Evans, and Caroline (Timothy) Fritz; great-nephew, Sam John; and great-great-nephew, Nikoli; and cousins, Lonna (James) Lowe, Debbie (Lynn) Carcus, and Sandra Dickens.

A funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m., on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at Corpus Christi University Parish, 2955 Dorr St., Toledo, with interment following at Calvary Cemetery, 2224 Dorr St., Toledo.