Note: If you are interested in attending this event, please RSVP here or select the "Register" button on this page. The sixth Faculty Pub Night of the 2026-27 season features Holli Levitsky, professor of English and director of Jewish Studies (Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts). She will discuss her recent publication, "Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time: Essays and Selected Poems." About Faculty Pub Night Students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of the public are all invited to the 2026-27 series of Faculty Pub Night at the William H. Hannon Library. Eight LMU professors are selected annually to discuss their latest publication or project in a comfortable setting and format that welcomes diverse perspectives for an inclusive conversation aimed to educate the entire community. All Faculty Pub Nights are free and open to the public. About the Author's Work In this carefully edited collection of essays and published and unpublished poetry, preeminent poetry scholars and fellow poets explore American poet Hyam Plutzik’s life and work. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Plutzik was versed in Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew, and English. His poetry is inflected with the richly figured linguistic mosaic of his cultural inheritance, “a memory that knows no walls.” Surfacing at a time of cultural change globally, and set against the historical rupture of the Holocaust and World War II, his impressively crafted poetry is preoccupied with themes of Jewish ancestry and history as a fragile and impermanent record, and Jewish liturgy and midrash against the hybridity of Jewish American identity. While his poetry was among the emerging American literary voices of his time, his untimely death came at the cusp of national and international acclaim. The essays in this collection approach Plutzik’s contribution to American poetry as it intersects with and is informed by his Jewish identity. We examine Plutzik as a Jewish American writer, one for whom the tensions and dualities of identity for Jewish writers at his time and place surface throughout his body of work. About the Author Holli Levitsky is founder and director of the Jewish Studies Program and professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Among other publications, she is editor or co-editor of five books, "Summer Haven: The Catskills, the Holocaust and the Literary Imagination"; "The Literature of Exile and Displacement: American Identity in a Time of Crisis"; "Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures: Reading and Teaching"; "Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman’s Experience"; and "Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time". Her current research focuses on impossible metaphors of the Holocaust, the basis for her current project, "Excremental Aesthetics: Human Waste and the Geography of the Holocaust". Among other honors, awards, and fellowships, she held the 2001-2002 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Literature at the University of Warsaw. She is an affiliated professor at University of Haifa in Israel. About the William H. Hannon Library The William H. Hannon Library fosters excellence in academic achievement through an array of distinctive services that enable learners to feed their curiosity, experience new worlds, develop their ideas, inform their decision-making, and inspire others. More information can be found at http://library.lmu.edu For more information about this event, contact the Outreach and Engagement team at the William H. Hannon library via email at library.outreach@lmu.edu or call 310-338-5234.