Education
He received his Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) from Fordham University in 1965 and his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale in 1970.
He received his Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) from Fordham University in 1965 and his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale in 1970.
In 1969 he joined the History Department of the University of Texas at Austin, where he is now the John East. Green Regents Professor in History. His research interests center on the history of the law, the relationship between law and politics in early modern Britain, the formation of the British state, witch-hunting, and demonic possession. Levack is most widely known for his book The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (3rd edition, 2006), a comparative survey of witch-hunting throughout the early modern world that has been translated into eight languages.
His most recent book, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (2013), challenges the commonly held belief that possession signals physical or mental illness and argues that demoniacs and exorcists—consciously or not—are following their various religious cultures, and their performances can only be understood in those contexts.
The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975, Levack was appointed Scholar in Residence at the Frances Lewis Law Center, Washington and Lee University School of Law, in 1994. Foreign eight years he served as the chair of his department.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, edited Oxford: Oxford University Press.