Citation for Susan Levine (Honorary Membership)

Susan F. Levine is a Poe scholar of a special sort because her professional life has not revolved around Poe. An expert in Latin American literature, she has published widely on Carlos Fuentes, and at the University of Kansas, she taught Spanish and served in administration before retiring as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School in 1992. Demanding as that academic work was, it never exhausted her intellectual curiosity. Her other activities ranged from creative writing to art collecting, from fossil identification to banjo playing—all of which she still pursues, in her eighties, with characteristic brilliance and verve.Susan's abiding interests include, of course, the works of Poe, as her publication record shows. Of particular importance there are the editions of Poe's writings she prepared with her late husband Stuart, their collaboration beginning in the 1970s and ending with the appearance of Critical Theory: The Major Documents in 2009. Through it all, Susan and Stuart were true partners. In fact, her sons Aaron and Allen remember days when their parents spent hours going through Poe texts line-by-line while identifying items for annotation. Susan also scoured collections at the Morgan Library, the Ransom Center, and the New York Public Library, finding relevant materials and checking sources. The Poe editions that the Levines published together were, in short, as much Susan's as Stuart's.Stuart has rightfully been recognized for his contributions to Poe studies, but Susan deserves praise in equal measure. Without Susan, students of Poe would not have the editions of his major critical works and Eureka that scholars frequently cite as standard texts—to say nothing of the excellent collections of Poe's short fiction she also produced with Stuart. For these achievements, the Poe Studies Association named Susan an Honorary Member, a title she has, without question, earned.