Michael Levenson

(1979)
William B. Christian Professor
Modern Literature and Critical Theory

Degrees

Ph.D. Stanford, 1979
B.A. Harvard, 1973

Books

  • Modernism (Yale University Press, forthcoming)
  • The Spectacle of Intimacy: A Public Life for the Victorian Family (co-author Karen Chase). Princeton University Press 2000.
  • Editor, The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • The Fate of Individuality: Character and Form in the Modern English Novel. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  • A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Articles

  • “T.S. Eliot as Public Intellectual,” T. S. Eliot in Context, ed. Jason Harding (Cambridge, forthcoming)
  • “James and Fin-de-Siècle London,” Henry James in Context, ed. David McWhirter (Cambridge, forthcoming)
  • “Joyce and Modernism,” James Joyce in Context, ed. John McCourt (Cambridge,forthcoming)
  • “Conrad and Modernism,” Joseph Conrad in Context, ed. Allan Simmons (Cambridge, forthcoming)
  • “Eliot’s Politics,” Blackwell Companion to T.S. Eliot, ed. David Chinitz (forthcoming)
  • “Mayhew, the Prince, and the Poor: The Great Exhibition of Power and Dispossession,” (co-author Karen Chase), eds. James Buzard, Joseph Childers, Eileen Gillooly (forthcoming in Victorian Prism)
  • “Green Dickens,” (co-author Karen Chase) Contemporary Dickens: Essays in Honor of Steven Marcus (forthcoming, Ohio State University Press)
  • “Joyce’s Ulysses, Five Ways” in Thinking of Reading, ed. Jessica Feldman (University of Virginia Press, 2008)
  • “Failure and the Forms of Intelligence: Orwell's Novels of the 1930s,” Cambridge Companion to George Orwell, ed. John Rodden (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
  • “T.S. Eliot,” Encyclopedia of British Literature,(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • “Queen Victoria,” Encyclopedia of British Literature, co-author Karen Chase (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • “Modernism,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005)
  • “Modernist Fiction: Time and Consciousness” in The New Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature, ed. Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
  • “The Fate of the Arts,” Hedgehog Review, (Fall 2004)
  • “Millennial London: The Mayor and the Monuments” in Imagined Londons, ed. Pamela Gilbert (State University of New York Press, 2002)
  • “Iris Murdoch: The Philosophic Fifties and The Bell,” Modern Fiction Studies, (Spring 2001)
  • “The Religion of Fiction” in Essays on the Fiction of A.S. Byatt: Imagining the Real, ed. Alexa Alfer and Michael Noble (Greenwood Press, 2001)
  • “Irving Howe,” general introduction, Irving Howe (University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
  • "Does "The Waste Land" Have a Politics?", Modernism/Moderity (September 1999).
  • "The Performance of Judith Butler," Lingua Franca (September 1999).
  • "Secret History" in The Secret Sharer: A Case Study in Contempory Criticism (St. Martin's Press, 1997).

Lectures and Conferences

  • “Paper Traces: The Circulation of Waste in Mayhew’s London,” Monuments and Dust: The Culture of London, annual conference (co-author Karen Chase), July 2004
  • “The Future of English,” South Atlantic MLA convention, November 2004
  • “Psycho-geography after Empire: Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair, and the Question of London,” paper delivered at the MLA convention, December 2003
  • “Bodyshocks: What to do with the dying?” paper delivered at the MLA convention (co-author Karen Chase), December 2003
  • “Where to Breathe in Gissing’s London,” Monuments and Dust: The Culture of London, annual conference (co-author Karen Chase), July 2003
  • “The Avant-Garde at War: Teaching the Violence in Modernism,” paper delivered at the MLA convention, December 2002
  • "The Country Mouse and the City of Cats: Dickensian Age in 'The Heart of Mid-London'" Monuments and Dust: The Culture of London, annual conference (co-author Karen Chase), July 2002
  • “Making Room for Modernism,” Harvard University, November 2001
  • “London through the Aged,” Annual Conference of the Dickens Society, (co-author Karen Chase), Roanoke Virginia, October 2001
  • “Mayhew in Two,” Monuments and Dust: The Culture of London, annual conference, (co-author Karen Chase), July 2001
  • “A Crystal Palace in a Muddy London,” City University of New York, Conference on the Crystal Palace, April 2001
  • “Where Was Modernism?” University of North Carolina, Greensboro, March 2001
  • “The Fate of Reading in the Screen Age,” paper delivered at the MLA convention, December 2000
  • Invited Panelist, “Modernism and the Emotions,” Modernist Studies Association, October 2000
  • “The Place of Age,” Monuments and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London, annual conference (co-author Karen Chase), July 2000
  • Chair and Presenter, “The City of Modernism,” “‘Petals on a Wet, Black, Bough’: the Flaneur, the Crowdmaster and the Modernist,” Modernist Studies Association, Penn State, Oct 1999
  • “Does “The Waste Land” Have a Politics,” York University, June 1999
  • “A One-Room Solution,” paper delivered at second annual conference on “Monuments and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London” (co-author Karen Chase), July 1999
  • “The Aging Queen and the Youth of Culture,” (co-author Karen Chase) MLA convention, December 1998
  • "What was London?" keynote address, Mid-Atlantic British Studies Conference, New York, April 1998
  • "Crystal Palace, plc," conference on Victorian Collaboration,(co-author Karen Chase) Graduate Center, CUNY, April 1998
  • “Their London, Our Emergency: The Conditions of the Humanities and the Recovery of the Metropolis,” keynote address, James Madison University graduate conference, April 1998
  • "'Unreal City': London from the Parish to the Fetish,"Harvard University, October 1997
  • "On the Parapets of Privacy," Harvard University, October 1997
  • "Give, Sympathize and Control: Does The Waste Land have a politics?" The Waste Land after Seventy-five Years, MLA convention, December 1997.
  • “Repopulating London,” Mid-Atlantic British Studies Conference, New York, April 1997
  • "What was the Avant-Garde? Koons, Kitsch and Post-Modernity," Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, April 1996
  • “The Dying Wife, The Strolling Bloomer and the Nightingale: Pleasures as Perils at the Victorian Fireside,” University of Warwick, (co-author Karen Chase) December 1996
  • "The History of a Secret: Conrad's 'Secret Sharer' and the Crisis of Modernity," University of Kent, United Kingdom, July 1995
  • "Lost in London," Centre College, April 1995
  • "Joyce and Pound: Contesting Modernisms within a Literary Cousinship," Chair, MLA panel, San Diego, 1994
  • "'Lords over Fact': The Aesthetics of Pound's Fascism," MLA annual convention, 1993
  • "Did Human Nature Change in 1910? The Ambitions of an Avant-garde," The Croll Lecture, Gettysburg College, April 1993
  • "Home Truths, Family Values, and Other Embers in the Victorian Hearth," Union College, October 1992
  • "God's Politics: Eliot's Late Politics", MLA annual convention, 1991
  • "From the Epic To the Lighthouse," Yale University, April, 1989
  • "Letters Home: E.M. Forster and A Passage to India," MLA annual convention, 1988
  • "T.S. Eliot: The End of Tradition and the Beginning of History," Miami University, Oxford Ohio, June 1988
  • "The Political Aesthete," University of Chicago, May 1986
  • "Conrad and Arnold," Queens College, April 1982
  • "Impressionism" The Grammar of a Literary Concept," MLA annual convention, 1980
  • "Subjects and Objects: A Study in Bronte's Villette" (co_author, Karen Chase),MLA annual convention, 1977

Reviews

  • “Institutions of Modernism,” Lingua Franca (March 2000)
  • "The Unquiet Englishman," review of The Life of Graham Greene, vol. 2, 1939-1955, by Norman Sherry and Graham Greene: The Enemy Within, by Michael Shelden, The New Republic (December 11, 1995)
  • "To Catch a Thief," review of Genet: A Biography by Edmund White, The New Republic, (February 21, 1994)
  • Review of Strong Representations by Alexander Welsh, Victorian Studies, vol. 36, no. 4. (summer 1993)
  • "The Religion of Fiction," review of Angels & Insects by A.S. Byatt, The New Republic, (August 2, 1993; rpt. as concluding essay in A.S. Byatt, Degrees of Freedom, 1994)
  • Review of " English Music," by Peter Ackroyd, The New Republic, January 18, 1993
  • "Lust and Logic," review of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: Volume One -- The Private Years (1884-1914), ed. Nicholas Griffin, The New Republic, August 17, 1992
  • "Sons and Fathers," review of Ever After, by Graham Swift, The New Republic, June 22, 1992
  • "Flaubert's Parrot," review of Talking It Over, by Julian Barnes, The New Republic, December 16, 1991
  • "Harold Pinter," The New Republic, February 11, 1991
  • "Between the Acts," review of Letters of Leonard Woolf, ed. by Frederic Spotts, The New Republic, February 12, 1990
  • "Necessary Fictions," review of Wallace Stevens: The Later Years, 1923-1955, by Joan Richardson, The New Republic (December 19, 1988)
  • "Let us Advert Then, You and I," review of England Their England, by Denis Donoghue, New York Times Book Review (December 25, 1988)
  • "Liberals in Love," review of The Book and the Brotherhood, by Iris Murdoch, The New Republic (June 6, 1988)
  • "Budding Brooke," review of The Neo-Pagans: Rupert Brooke and the Ordeal of Youth, by Paul Delany, The New Republic (August 31, 1987)
  • "The Nayman of Noland," review of The Beckett Country, by Eoin O'Brien; Four Dubliners, by Richard Ellmann; On Beckett, by S.E. Gontarski; Beyond Minimalism, by Enoch Brater, The New Republic, (July 6, 1987)
  • "Humble Pies," Harper's 249 (November, 1974)
  • "The Irony and the Ecstasy," Harper's 249 (September, 1974)

Honors and Memberships

  • Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (year to be arranged)
  • Fellow, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, 1997-1998
  • Fellow, Teaching Technology Initiative, 1995-1996
  • Director, NEH Summer Seminar, The Culture of London, 1850-1925, summer 1995
  • Lamont Professor of Ancient and Modern Languages, Union College, Fall 1992
  • Member, MLA Division Executive Committee, Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Literature, 1995-1998
  • Chair (1995) and member (1994) of the judging panel for the Margaret Church Modern Fiction Studies Memorial Prize