Amy K. Levin is Director of Women's Studies, Chair of the Museum Studies Committee, and Professor of English. Levin has taught classes in women's literature, Women's Studies, Museum Studies, nineteenth-century British literature, and African-American literature. Levin is also active as a member of the Committee on Multicultural Education Curriculum Transformation and of the President's Commission on the Status of Women. She has served as chair of the internal strategic planning committee of the National Women’s Studies Association as well. Currently, Levin is involved in efforts to increase recruitment and retention of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at all levels.

Levin’s awards and recognition include receiving a Faculty Achievement Award from Central Missouri State University and the first Outstanding Mentor Award from the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women at NIU. She has also completed a fellowship from the Ford Foundation to conduct research on Africanisms in African-American culture and literature.

Levin's research focuses on literature by women as well as race, class, and gender in museums. In 1992, Bucknell University Press published The Suppressed Sister, a book on the relationships among biological sisters in nineteenth and twentieth-century novels by British women. In 2003, Levin published Africanism and Authenticity in African American-Women’s Novels, and in 2007, she published an edited collection of articles, Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities. Levin has also published poetry and translations extensively in small magazines. She has written several articles on writing instruction, one for English Journal and one for an NCTE book, The High School Writing Center. Currently, Levin is writing a book on museums, narrative, and culture, to be titled The Museum of Museums and Other Essays, and she is collecting articles for a reader on gender and museums.

Levin came to Northern Illinois University in 1995 from Central Missouri State University. Prior to teaching college, Dr. Levin taught at Scarsdale (NY) High School for eight years. She received her Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center, her M.A. in English from the University of Colorado, and her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard.

For information about Levin's book Africanism and Authenticity in African-American Women's Novels and to see pictures from her book release party, click on the title .