David J. Levin, the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies, Department of Cinema & Media Studies, the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies, and the College, has been appointed the Senior Adviser to the Provost for Arts. As Chair of the Arts Steering Committee and Senior Adviser to the Provost, Levin will work closely with UChicago Arts and colleagues across the University to ensure the arts continue to contribute to the eminence of the University and its impact on Chicago and beyond.

Levin is the Chair of the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies, where he worked to develop a new and innovative joint PhD program, the only such program in North America. Levin also co-led efforts to create the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and was appointed its founding Director in June 2011. 

Levin’s work focuses on the aesthetics and politics of performance in opera, theater, and cinema. He is the editor of Opera Through Other Eyes (Stanford University Press, 1994), and the author of Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen: The Dramaturgy of Disavowal (Princeton University Press, 1998) and  Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky (University of Chicago Press, 2007). He has also worked extensively as a dramaturg for various opera and ballet productions in Germany and the United States. 

Levin replaces Bill Brown, the Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, who has served as Senior Adviser for the last four years.