Dr. Emily J. Levine
Contact Information
Email: ejlevine@uncg.edu
Office: MHRA 2117
Office Phone: 336-334-3514
Education
Ph.D., Stanford University, 2008
M.A., Stanford University, 2005
B.A., Yale University, 2001
Teaching Experience
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010-present
Instructor, Yale University, 2008-2010
Teaching Assistant, Stanford University, 2003-2005
Research Interests
My research interests are in the cultural and intellectual history of twentieth-century Germany. In particular, I focus on the "conditions of possibility" of intellectual production, including the settings, contexts, and institutions that enable and authenticate ideas. My first book, based on my dissertation, analyzes the intellectual collaboration of Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer, and Erwin Panofsky in interwar Hamburg. The book argues that this group's unconventional scholarship in art history and philosophy directly arose from the familial, religious, and economic conditions of the city in which they lived.
I am simultaneously beginning two new projects that deal with ideas and their contexts. The first are a series of essays devoted to the "private history of ideas"; that is, an inquiry that takes seriously intimate relationships as a context for intellectual life. The first of these, "PanDora, or Erwin and Dora Panofsky, and the Private History of Ideas" examines how the personal is an essential factor in the preconditions of scholarship, but is subsequently repressed to enable the myth of objective historical inquiry. A second book length project will focus on the emergence of private institutes of scholarship within the context of twentieth-century debates concerning the Humboldtian ideal of scholarship.
Current Projects
- On leave for the 2012-2013 academic year as Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Freie Universität in Berlin.
- "Humboldt's Gift": The Sources and Authorities of Scholarship between Twentieth-Century Germany and America (book project).
- "The Awful English Language: Emigration, Translation, and the Fate of German Ideas in America" (article under review).
Courses Taught
- HIS 223: Modern Europe: A survey of the political, social, and cultural history of Europe from the time of the French Revolution to the present with emphasis on the emergence of political ideologies and categories of inclusion and exclusion in the boundaries of Europe.
- HIS 397: Modern European Thought: "The Power of Ideas." An upper-level undergraduate course devoted to key thinkers in 18th-20th century European cultural and intellectual history, including Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, De Beauvoir, and Arendt. Additional readings on varying approaches to the history of ideas.
- HIS 511B: Historical Research and Writing: "'Democracy and Its Discontents': The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933." A speaking and writing intensive interdisciplinary seminar examining the relationship between culture and politics in Germany's interwar period.
- HIS 740: Selected Topics in Modern European History: "Exiled in Paradise: German Intellectuals in America." A graduate reading seminar examining the impact of German émigrés on multiple fields in the humanities, fine arts, architecture, and film in postwar America.
- HSS 222 (Honors): Flappers and Philosophers: Ideas, Culture, and Politics Between The Wars. An honors seminar devoted to the main historical events and intellectual movements of the 1920s and 30s in Europe and America. Emphasis on the interconnections between ideas and politics, the fluctuations between left and right politics, and transatlantic figures.
Recent Publications
- "The Weimar Circle as Hamburg School" (article accepted, Journal of the History of Ideas).
- Hamburg, Dreamland of Humanists: Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer, and Erwin Panofsky in Weimar Germany (forthcoming, The University of Chicago Press).
- "PanDora, or Erwin and Dora Panofsky and the Private History of Ideas," (December 2011, The Journal of Modern History).
- "Sokrates an der Elbe? Erwin Panofsky und die Hamburger Schule der Kunstgeschichte in den 1920er Jahren," Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg 2007, Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, March 2008.
- Claudia Kemper, Das "Gewissen" 1919-1925: Kommunikation und Vernetzung der Jungkonservativen (Munich, 2011), Journal of Modern History (forthcoming).
- Other publications listed on Vitae.
Awards and Honors
- On leave for the 2012-2013 academic year as Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Freie Universität in Berlin.
- Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, 2008-2010
- Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Stanford University, 2007-2008
- Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Fellowship in Jewish Culture, Center for Jewish History, New York, 2007-2008
- German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) ten-month research fellowship, 2005-2006
