Meet the Faculty

Nancy Levene

• Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies
• Member, Jewish Studies Program
• Affiliated Member, West European Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at Harvard University, 2000

Contact Information

Background

• New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Exploration Traveling Fellowship, Indiana University (Summer 2006)
• Indiana University College of Arts and Humanities Institute Conference Grant (Summer 2006)
• Robert A. Borns and Sandra S. Borns Program in Jewish Studies at Indiana University Conference Grant (Summer 2006)
• Class of 1945 World Fellowship, Williams College (2003-2004)
• Yad Hanadiv Beracha Foundation Junior Faculty Fellowship (2003-2004)
• Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship for the Study of Ethical and Religious Values (1997-98)

My academic interests are focused on the intellectual history and thought of the Modern West, including the periodization of modernity and the concept of religion and its study. My first book (Spinoza's Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason [Cambridge University Press, 2004]) takes up Spinoza's critique of religion in the light of his defense of both divine and human laws, and argues that this defense was designed to redraw religion, as well as reason, in political and historical terms. This reading places Spinoza in conversation with those thinkers—medieval and modern—who struggled with the relationship between reason and history, and raises anew the question of how to think about the history of these struggles. In my current research, I am working on the multiple histories (and concepts of history) that inform the study of religion, and on the motif of reason as a site of investment and contestation. My research and teaching consider Western ideas of reason in the broadest terms—religious, secular, multilingual, metaphoric, fantastical, utopian, dominating, and dominated—while also seeking other ways of thinking about the West and its interpretation. I have worked with a research collective in Jewish studies focused on reading classical texts, and the traditions they support, in light of contemporary questions, concerns, and critiques. The volume I co-edited (Textual Reasonings [Eerdmans, 2002]) is one fruit of that engagement. Additional interests include Marx, theories of democracy, and critical readings of literature, including the Bible and its interpretations and 19th and 20th century English and American poetry. I teach courses that touch on all of these areas of interest, as well as introductory courses on theories of religion and more specialized courses on particular thinkers, movements, and conceptual problems.

Research Interests

• Modern European Thought and Intellectual History (17th-19th centuries)
• 20th Century German and French Thought
• Jewish Thought and Philosophy
• Religion and Political Theory

Courses Recently Taught

• R133: Introduction to Religion
• C103: Theism, Atheism, and Existentialism
• R300: Interpretations of Reality
• D410/R581: Religion, Reason, and Literature
• R665: Interpretations of Religion and Modernity
• R672: Kant and Hegel
• R791: Readings in Theory and Method in the Study of Religion
  

Publication Highlights

Books

Spinoza's Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century, co-editor with Peter Ochs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

Articles

"Does Spinoza think the Bible is sacred?" Jewish Quarterly Review 101, 4 (Fall 2011): 545-573.

"Memento Mori: Gary Lease and the Study of Religion," Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 21, 2 (2009): 139-156.

"Traces of History in St. Anselm," Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20, 4 (2008): 171-184.

"Athens and Jerusalem: Myths and Mirrors in Strauss’s Vision of the West,” Hebraic Political Studies, 3, 2 (Spring 2008): 113-155.

"Reflections on Knowledge and Obscurity from Anselm to Freud," Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal LXXXIX, 1-2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 101-134.

"Sources of History: Myth and Image." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74: 1 (March 2006): 79-101.

"Response to Gavin Flood." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74:1 (March 2006): 59-63.

"Reply to José Cabezón.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74:1 (March 2006): 105-106.

"The Fall of Eden: Reasons and Reasoning in the Bible and the Talmud,"
Philosophy Today 50: 1/5 (2006): 6-23.

"Levinas's Beginnings: Ethics, Politics, and Origins," Journal of the European Legacy 9: 1 (2004): 12-54.

"Judaism's Body Politic," Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004): 234-262.

"From Law to Ethics... and Back: Trajectories in Jewish Ethics," A Companion to Religious Ethics, ed. William Schweiker (Cambridge: Blackwell, 2004): 188-196.

"Spinoza's Bible," Philosophy and Theology 13: 1 (2001): 93-142.

"Ethics and Interpretation, or How to Study Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus without Strauss," The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 10 (2000): 57-110.

Blogs

"Paul Kahn's roots," a response to Paul Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Columbia University Press, 2011). Posted on The Immanent Frame: A Social Science Research Council blog, July 14, 2011. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/07/14/paul-kahns-roots/

"Commentaries on our age," a review of Craig Calhoun, Michael Warner, Jonathan van Antwerpen, Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). Posted on The Immanent Frame: A Social Science Research Council blog, July 8, 2010. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/07/08/commentaries-on-our-age/

"The third rose," a review of Youth without Youth, by Francis Ford Coppola. Posted on The Immanent Frame: A Social Science Research Council blog, April 9, 2008. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/04/09/the-third-rose/

"The forces unleashed," a response to Mark Lilla's The Stillborn God (Knopf, 2007). Posted on "The Immanent Frame": A Social Science Research Council blog, January 1, 2008. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/01/01/the-forces-unleashed/