Laura Levitt

Laura Levitt

  • College of Liberal Arts

    Religion

    Professor

    Programs
    • Liberal Studies
    • Jewish Studies
    • Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

    Affiliated Faculty

    Programs
    • Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies
Office Location

Mazur Hall, 641

Expertise

Memory, Trauma, Loss, Gender, American Jewish Life, Holocaust, Visual culture, Gender

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 edits NYU Press’s North American Religions Serieswith Tracy Fessenden (Arizona State University) and David Harrington Watt (Haverford College) .

She currently chairs the Committee on Sexual Misconduct for the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) and lead 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 and is 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

  • “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

Film Project

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