Lital Levy

I am an interdisciplinary scholar of Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. While my interests are broad, my research is concentrated in three areas: the culture of Israel/Palestine; the historical and contemporary experiences of Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Arab Jewish communities; and theoretical issues of comparison, representation, language, and history, such as translation, literary multilingualism, literary vernaculars, world literature, and cross-cultural comparison. I work largely in the intersections of literature and history. I am passionate about breaking down boundaries, be they conceptual, disciplinary, or institutional in nature. I believe in collaborative work in the humanities and social sciences.

I obtained my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley in 2007 and spent three years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Currently I am Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. At Princeton, I teach Hebrew and Arabic literature, literary theory, and Jewish studies, and I advise undergraduate and graduate students working on a wide range of topics.  My first book, Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine (Princeton UP, 2014), was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer Award in the category of Jewish literature and linguistics (2012-2014) from the Association for Jewish Studies; the Salo Baron Prize from the American Academy of Jewish Research for the best first book in Jewish studies; and the MLA First Book Prize. In 2019-2020 I was an ACLS Burkhardt Fellow in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (School of Historical Studies).

You can email me at: lital@princeton.edu