Expertise

Memory, Trauma, Loss, Holocaust, Gender, material and visual culture, American Jewish Life

Biography

Laura Levitt is Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender at Temple University where she has chaired the Religion Department and directed both the Jewish Studies and the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Programs.

Levitt is the author of The Objects that Remain (Penn State University Press, November 2020); American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007); and Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home (1997). With Laurence Silbersteinand Shelley Hornstein, she edited Impossible Images: Contemporary Art After the Holocaust (2003), and with Miriam Peskowitz she edited Judaism Since Gender (1997). Laura Levitt is a founding editor of NYU Press’s North American Religions Series with Tracy Fessenden (Arizona State University) and David Harrington Watt (Haverford College) .

She has chaired and continues to serve as secretary of the Committee on Sexual Misconduct for the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). She led the task force that created and implemented the Society's sexual misconduct policies and procedures. Levitt is working on a series of projects that consider the reliquary desires that inform contemporary acts of commemoration including a special issue of MAVCOR Journal, "Tending to Holocaust Objects" (Summer 2025) and is working on a book about the former East German writer, Christa Wolf. She is also putting together a collection of essays whose working title is I and You: Jewish Feminist Writing.

Curriculum Vitae | Website

Selected Publications

Books 

• The Objects that Remain, Penn State University Press, 2020.
• American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust, NYU Press, 2007.
• Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home, Routledge, 1997.

Articles

• “Boots on the Ground,” Fashion Studies, 4.1(April 2025), 1https://www.fashionstudies.ca/boots-on-the-ground, 10.38055/FCT040102.
• “How Do We Talk to Each Other about Zionism in Jewish Studies? What Happened to Critical Engagement?" Shofar (Spring, 2024), 224-229.
• Co-authored: Laura Levitt 50%, Ruth Ost 50%, “Seeing and Doing,” American Imago, Vol. 80, No. 1, 43-60. (Spring, 2023) 43-60.
• “A Photograph in Words,” Object Narrative. MAVCOR Journal 6, no.3. (2022), doi:10.22332/mav.obj.2022.24. https://mavcor.yale.edu/mavcor-journal/photograph-words
• Co-authored: Laura Levitt 25%, Sally Promey, 40%, David Walker, 35%, “American Performances, Economies, and Genealogies of Constraint,” Conversation, MAVCOR Journal 6, no.3. (2022), doi:10.22332/mav.convo.2022. https://mavcor.yale.edu/mavcor-journal/american-performances-economies-and-genealogies-constraint
• “The Allure of Material Objects: Fetishization Reconsidered,” Massachusetts Review, 60:4 (Winter 2019-20), 1-17.
• “The I in My Text: Revisiting Critical Feminist Identity Politics, Refusing the Allures of Purity,” for Shofar, 37.2 (Summer 2019), 91-106.
• "Miki Kratsman, Diptych from The Resolution of the Suspect," MAVCOR, Material and Visual Culture, Yale University, Online Publication, live March 24, 2018, https://mavcor.yale.edu/mavcor-journal/miki-kratsman-diptych-from-the-resolution-of-the-suspect doi:10.22332/mav.obj.2018.2
• “Revisiting the Property Room: A Humanist Perspective on Doing Justice and Telling Stories,” MAVCOR, Material and Visual Culture, Yale University, Online publication, live April 30, 2015, http://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/essays/revisiting-property-room-humanist-perspective-doing-justice-and-telling-stories doi:10.22332/mav.med.2015.1
• “Living Memory,” Journal of Jewish Identities, 6.2(July 2013), 67-88.
• “Evidence: Doing Justice,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 41.4(November, 2012), 37-44.
• “A Letter to Mary Daly,” for special forum in Honor of Mary Daly, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 28.2 (Fall 2012), 109-112.

Bibliographies/Encyclopedia Pieces

• with Miriam Peskowitz, “Feminism” for Naomi Seidman and David Biale, ed. Judaism, Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, Online, (Live, March 12, 2015).
• "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. Updated and Revised, Second Edition, 2015, 875-878.

Academic Blogs and Communal Writing

• “Objects, Trauma, Violence, and Loss: Telling Stories, Doing Justice,” Immanent Frame, https://tif.ssrc.org/2024/08/14/objects-trauma-violence-and-loss-telling-stories-doing-justice/.August 14, 2024.
• “Holy Uncertainty and the Promise of More Intersectional Engagement: Reflections on the Legacy of Dabru Emet,” American Religion,https://www.american-religion.org/dabruemet/levitt?fbclid=IwAR1OBV5b-fACrTqfu85viSXaBTb_16a0BkAIg7KmacKwRAopQsvz2CvCiNc May 25, 2021.
• “Revisiting Reflections on Relics and Contagion in Two Parts (November 2019),” for Political Theology https://politicaltheology.com/revisiting-reflections-on-relics-and-contagion-in-two-parts-november-2019/ September 10, 2020.
• “100 Blessings,” Pandemic and Plague: Theological and Philosophical Reflections, https://katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/blog/pandemic-and-plague-theological-and-philosophical-reflections April 6, 2020.
• “(Holocaust Memory) Laura Levitt guest blog (The Evidence Room),” Jewish Philosophy Place, https://jewishphilosophyplace.com/2019/07/01/holocaust-memory-laura-levitt-guest-blog-the-evidence-room/
  fbclid=IwAR0wX3NbPgcexizlrEnitlmu3F8X_Y0LfXmc7oq8odt_wO85Vt1ruTKPX20 July 1, 2019.

Film Project

• “Kaddish for My Mother,” May 2013

Courses Taught

Undergraduate

• Religion/Jewish Studies 802/902 Race and Identity in Judaism
• Religion/Jewish Studies 2401 What is Judaism?
• Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies 3097 Feminist Theory
• Religion, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies 3900
• Honors Research Seminar: Evidence the Course

Graduate/Undergraduate

• Religion, Jewish Studies, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies 4411, Secularism: Muslim and Jewish Women

Graduate

• Religion 5401, Foundations: Judaism
• Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies 8001, Graduate Feminist and Queer Theory
• Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies 9991, Graduate Research Seminar