News Release

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By JIM WALSH
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL — Dr. Madeline G. Levine, Kenan professor of Slavic literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was honored by her peers today (April 22) with the 2005 Thomas Jefferson Award.

Chancellor James Moeser presented the award at today’s Faculty Council meeting.

Levine has taught at UNC since 1974, published numerous scholarly articles and book-length literary translations, won more than a dozen fellowships and awards and contributed to the life of the university, serving in administrative and advisory capacities.

"The person we honor today exemplifies a commitment to justice, to international understanding and to service, here at UNC, in the broader community and around the world," wrote Dr. Joy Kasson, a UNC professor and chair of American studies, in the award citation for Levine.

The annual award honors a UNC faculty member who, through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing and scholarship, has best exemplified the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson. UNC faculty members nominate candidates for the honor, which carries a cash prize; a faculty committee, chaired this year by Kasson, chooses the winner.

Levine thanked her colleagues and called the time since she learned of the award "a week of feeling overwhelmed by this honor and truly humbled to be the recipient of an award which bears the name of a man who was an icon of American liberty and enlightenment."

Levine graduated from Brandeis University magna cum laude with honors in politics, then received a master’s degree in regional studies and a doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from Harvard University.

Among her scholarly achievements while at UNC are her translations from Polish into English, including translations of 10 books. She has translated many fictional narratives written by Holocaust survivors and the prose of Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. She edited Milosz’s "To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays."

"In ways Thomas Jefferson would surely have admired, Professor Levine has continually explored how works of literature reflect and influence historical and political currents," Kasson wrote. "Much of her scholarship and teaching focuses on the literary representation of the Holocaust and on Polish-Jewish relations in its wake."

Levine has received more than 14 honors and prizes, including the university’s highest award for outstanding accomplishment by a woman and membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

She won a PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 1988 for her work on "A Scrap of Time" by Ida Fink. (The award is from the PEN American Center, the U.S. arm of an international human rights and literary organization.) The American Library Association named the book one of its 10 best in 1987.

Levine has won two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For her work on "Milosz’s ABC’s," she received the 2003 award for Best Translation into English from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages.

Levine, commended in the citation for her "rigor, warmth and engagement," is completing her second three-year term on the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee and has served two terms on Faculty Council.

She spent nearly half her 31 years at UNC as chair of the Slavic Languages and Literatures department, where she currently is director of graduate studies. She also was undergraduate adviser for the program in Russian and East European studies.

Levine has been on boards and committees for the library, faculty hearings and educational policy and on search committees for dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (twice), provost and the university affirmative action officer. She helped found UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities and Jewish studies program.

One of Levine’s greatest contributions to the university, the citation stated, has been her work on the board of governors of the University of North Carolina Press, where she has been a member since 1988 and chairwoman since 1999.

"She has been instrumental in maintaining and enhancing the academic excellence of our press, defending the integrity of the campus personnel process and planning for and protecting important institutions of our university life," Kasson wrote. "She is a leading figure in her own academic field and in the international literary world through her work as a translator. Her advice is sought on matters of importance on our campus and beyond, and she gives her time generously for these worthy causes."

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Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/faculty/levine_madeline_05.JPG

Award contacts: Madeline G. Levine, 962-7553; Joy Kasson, 962-4063

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589