Associate Professor of Religion

A.B., Brown University 1982

M.A., Hebrew Union College-JIR 1986

Ph.D., Emory University 1993

Women's Studies Certificate, Emory University 1993

Current Research

Dr. Levitt just published a book that uses family photographs to address some of the legacies of ordinary loss that have shaped 20^th century American Jewish history and memory.  The book, American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust insists on lifting these images and stories up from under the shadow the Holocaust.  Dr. Levitt is also affiliated with the faculty of the Women's Studies and Dance Departments.

Director of Jewish Studies

641 Anderson Hall

Telephone: 215-204-4745
Email: llevitt@temple.edu

My Father’s World
by Laura Levitt, March 12th, 2008

In my father's world, books are sacred objects. Authors are to be worshiped, especially those who write literature. Novelists, poets, and playwrights are among those ensconced in his pantheon. For my father, literature was not simply a subject he studied formally, but a larger vocation. He haunted bookstores. In Albany he sat at the feet of a man named Lockrow who owned his favorite shop, Lockrow's Bookstore at 52½ Spring Street. More than any of my father's other fellow book lovers and collectors, Harman Lockrow was a mentor to him. He encouraged my father to collect books. My father began this collecting as a college student in the late 1940s. By now he has an impressive collection of first editions. Mr. Lockrow taught him a great deal about the publication history of many of the books he collected. This is still the basis for much of my father's knowledge about these things. [Read More]

Article: "Laura and Miriam: On Friendship and Writing"

Read an interview with Dr. Levitt from Temple's library here http://blog.library.temple.edu/liblog/archives/2008/02/professor_laura.html .

Publications

The personal is political academic
In her new book, Temple professor Laura Levitt contemplates ordinary losses in relation to larger Jewish histories. [more]

Impossible Assimilation's, American Liberalism, and Jewish Difference: Revisiting Jewish Secularism. Download PDF

"American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust" NYU Press, 11/01/2007

"Refracted Vision, A Critique of "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art"
Download PDF

"Changing Focus: Family Photography and American Jewish Identity" http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/cf/index.htm

“Intimate Engagements: A Holocaust Lesson,” Nashim : A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Studies , Number 7 (Spring 5764/2004), 190-205.

“ Revenge, 2002," Nashim : A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Studies , Number 6 (Fall 5764/2003), 35-39.

"Judaism and Gender," International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences , Dr. Neil J. Smelser, and Dr. Paul B. Baltes, Editors in Chief, Oxford : Elsevier Science Limited, 2001, 8011-8014.

Jewish Studies Program