Dr. Laura Levitt
Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender
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
Levitt's current project, Evidence as Archive is a highly interdisciplinary work that builds on her prior work in feminist theory and Holocaust studies in order to take more seriously criminal evidence held in police storage as a repository of memory. It uses this evidence to rematerialize the stuff of archives even as it uses the vast body of recent scholarship on archives and memory, to make more visible the power of these otherwise invisible police collections and those who maintain them.
Painful, ordinary, and ubiquitous narratives of trauma and loss bind these different collections together. As Levitt argues memory is often animated by a desire for justice that may or may not be carried out through the formal structures of a legal system. In this way, Evidence as Archive builds directly on the work of Levitt's last book, American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007). Here again she places different kinds of traumatic narratives in next to each other. But this time, she look to the ordinary stories of crime much more broadly construed to ask these questions. She no longer focuses exclusively on Jewish narratives. Instead she asks what do everyday criminal cases have to tell us about the legacy of genocide? And by contrast, what do the kinds of insights about memory we have learned from Holocaust and genocide studies teach us about how we remember individual cases of violent crime? In so doing she opens up the seams that stitch together the gap between the formal structure of the law and the more ephemeral pursuit of justice. In this project memory and the physical objects that hold the traces of past injustice, hold the key.
American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007) used family photographs to address some of the legacies of ordinary loss that have shaped 20th century American Jewish history and memory. It insisted on lifting these images and stories up from under the shadow of the Holocaust. Professor Levitt directs the women's studies program, is the former long-term director of Jewish Studies and she is also affiliated with the faculty of the Dance Department.
In the News
- An interview with Dr. Levitt from Temple’s library.
- "The personal is
politicalacademic": In her new book, Temple professor Laura Levitt contemplates ordinary losses in relation to larger Jewish histories.
Publications
Article: "Laura and Miriam: On Friendship and Writing"
Review of Naomi Seidman, Faithful Renderings, Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation, Bridges 14.1(April 2009), 171-174. [PDF]
with Rebecca Alpert, introduction to "Jewish feminist and our fathers: Reflections across gender and generations," Bridge 14.1(April 2009), 1-10. [PDF]
"Embodied Criticism: A French Lesson," for a special issue on Life Writing, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Marlene Kadar, Linda Warley, and Jeanne Perreault, ed., 39.1-2(January-April, 2008), 217-238. [PDF]
with Deborah Glanzberg-Krainin, "Gender Theory and Jewish Studies," Religion Compass, Blackwell Publishing, online , 2/3(2009), 241-252.[PDF]
The Objectivity of Strangers, Seeing and Being Seen on the Street: A response to Deborah Dash Moore’s "On City Streets," The 2006 Marshall Sklare Memorial Lecture, Contemporary Jewry vol. 28(2008), 114-120. [PDF]
"Engendering the Jewish Past: Towards a More Feminist Jewish Studies," for a special issue of Feminist Theology, Julie Clague ed. 16.3(2008), 365-378. [PDF]
Review of Barbara Hahn, The Jewess Pallas Athena: This Too a Theory of Modernity, Jewish Quarterly Review 98.1(Winter 2008), 127-131.
Impossible Assimilation’s, American Liberalism, and Jewish Difference: Revisiting Jewish Secularism. [PDF]
"American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust" NYU Press, 11/01/2007
"Refracted Vision, A Critique of "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art" [PDF]
"Changing Focus: Family Photography and American Jewish Identity" [Read Online]
"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.