Brian Paul Levack (born 1943) is an American historian of early modern Britain and Europe. He received his B.A. (summa cum laude) from

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

in 1965, and then both his M.A. (1967) and Ph.D. (1970) from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. In 1969 he joined the History Department of the University of Texas at Austin, where he is now the John E. 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. He has edited twenty books, including ''The Jacobean Union: Six Tracts of 1604'' (1985) and ''The Witchcraft Sourcebook'' (2004). 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 Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1975, Levack was appointed Scholar in Residence at the Frances Lewis Law Center, Washington and Lee University School of Law, in 1994. At Texas he was admitted to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2004, and in 2011 he received the University of Texas Regents Outstanding Teaching Award. Levack offers a wide variety of courses on early modern British and European history, legal history, and the history of witchcraft. For eight years he served as the chair of his department.

Select bibliography

Books

* ''The Civil Lawyers in England, 1603-1641: A Political Study''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. * ''The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland and the Union, 1603-1707.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. * ''Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion''. London: Routledge, 2008. * ''The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013. * ''The West: Encounters and Transformations'' (with Edward Muir, Michael Maas, and Meredith Veldman). New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 2nd edition 2006, 3rd ed. 2010, 4th ed. 2013. * ''The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe''. London: Longman, 1987; 2nd ed. 1995; 3rd ed. 2006; 4d. 2016.

Books edited

* ''The Jacobean Union: Six Tracts of 1604.'' Co-edited with Bruce Galloway. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1985. * ''New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology: A Six-Volume Anthology of Articles.'' New York: Routledge, 2001. * ''The Witchcraft Sourcebook.'' New York and London: Routledge, 2004. * ''The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

References

__NOTOC__ {{DEFAULTSORT:Levack, Brian Paul 1943 births Living people Fordham University alumni Yale University alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty