Robert S. Levine

The impressively prolific Bob Levine has been an influential force in American and African American literature for thirty years, and more recently has contributed important new work to the burgeoning field of hemispheric American literature. His prominent publications, such as 2008's Dislocating Race and Nation, 1997's Martitn Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity, and 1989's Conspiracy and Romance: Studies in Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville, cover an array of themes critical to an understanding of 19th-century American literature. In addition, Levine's numerous scholarly editions of Melville, Hawthorne, Martin Delany, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Beecher Stowe have helped restore lesser known works to wider audiences. 

Levine is a highly visible figure in literary circles, sitting on the editorial boards of American Literary History, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, ESQ: A Journal of the American  Renaissance, serving as editor for the Norton Anthology of American Literature, and as editor of numerous volumes of collected criticism. Nevertheless, Levine remains equally visible in Tawes Hall. Besides organizing the annual Local Americanists lecture series and directing the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies, Levine is known as a vigorous and enthusiastic teacher committed to the success of his graduate and undergraduate students.