Caroline Levine, the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities in the department of English at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has been chosen to receive the 47th annual James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association. The award is given to the author of an outstanding book; either a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography.
Professor Levine will honored in January for her book Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Princeton University Press, 2015). The awards committee stated that Professor Levine’s book “argues for a redesign of formalism to explore new ways of thinking about relations between literature and social life.” The committee said that the book was written “with a stunning clarity that opens it to diverse readers in and beyond the academy.”
Professor Levine joined the faculty at Cornell earlier this year. She previously was a professor and chair of the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Levine taught at the University of Wisconsin for 14 years.
A graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in comparative literature, Professor Levine earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of London.