• Professor, Comparative Literature
• Professor, English
• Professor, Social Thought & Analysis

Joseph Loewenstein

Download

• Ph.D. in English at Yale University
• Master's Degree at Columbia University
• Bachelor's Degree in theater at Wesleyan University
• Bachelor's Degree in College of Letters (literature, history and philosophy) at Wesleyan University

News Stories & Tip Sheets:

Showing 1 Stories.

Digitizing the works of a 16th-century poet Spenser Project receives NEH Scholarly Editions Grant Jan. 7, 2008 -- It's been almost 100 years since Oxford University Press published the collected works of Edmund Spenser. An English professor and a team of Arts & Sciences undergraduate and graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis are involved in a major project to publish a new edition for Oxford University Press — which will be complemented by an even more substantial digital archive.

Showing 1 Stories.

Clips:

Showing 1 Clips.

Building a Spenser collection for the ages Los Angeles Times and 1 others Jan. 28, 2008 -- Joseph Loewenstein, a Renaissance literature expert at WUSTL, is leading a team of graduate and undergraduate students to compile, edit, annotate and digitize Spenser's complete oeuvre.

Loewenstein teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels, focusing on the literature of the English Renaissance, Shakespeare, Spenser and the culture of the book.

He received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Governor's Conference on Higher Education in December 2000.

The award provides the state an opportunity to recognize and honor outstanding Missouri faculty and symbolizes the governor's appreciation of educators. Recipients are selected based on effective teaching, effective advising, service to their university community, commitment to high standards of excellence and success in nurturing student achievement.

His students say he brings an infectious love for literature and ideas to the classroom. They have responded with accolades in their evaluations of his classes, and honored him in 1993 with a faculty award for outstanding teaching given by the Council of Students of Arts & Sciences. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, ACLS and the Exxon Education Foundation.

He teaches many courses in Renaissance literature and culture as well as a course on "Writers as Readers."

In addition to his teaching, Loewenstein chaired the curriculum implementation committee for Arts & Sciences' new undergraduate curriculum, which was introduced to all incoming first-year students in Arts & Sciences in fall 2001. While Arts & Sciences curriculum introduced significant program initiatives throughout the past decade, it had not had a comprehensive revision for almost 20 years.

Loewenstein has worked closely with faculty in all Arts & Sciences departments and interdisciplinary programs to develop new courses, with technological experts who are redesigning the course registration system, and with undergraduate advisors, among many others.

Lowenstein's latest role is as professor and director of the university's new Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities (IPH) in Arts & Sciences, which is founded on the Text & Tradition core program that allows students to explore the classical texts and intellectual traditions upon which Western culture has been built.

IPH, a rigorous, interdisciplinary program for students seeking honors, combines an introductory core — a concentrated study of texts central to the European and American philosophical, religious, and literary traditions — with an area of concentration that offers an advanced sequence of courses and research tailored to the special interests of each student in the program.

Loewenstein earned a bachelor's degree in theater and in the College of Letters (literature, history, and philosophy) from Wesleyan University in 1974, a master's degree from Columbia University in 1975, and a doctorate in English from Yale University in 1982.