Current Graduate Students

 
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Sean Burrus is a doctoral student in the History of Judaism track of the Department of Religion. He received his B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and began his graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to Duke. His studies have focused on the intersection of Jewish and Greco-Roman cultural worlds. As a student of religion, Sean specializes in the role of material culture in the production of religious identities. His current research is on the role of visual images in Jewish responses to diaspora and in the production of Jewish identities of difference, a topic he presented on at the 2011 Archaeological Institute of America conference in San Antonio. Sean is also a trained archaeologist and archaeological photographer with over seven seasons of combined experience excavating, photographing and supervising in the field at the sites of Yotvata, Ashekelon and Sepphoris.

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Follow A.T. on twitter: @coatesat

Check out his LinkedIn profile

www.atcoates.com

Vanessa Freije is a 6th-year PhD student in History. Her dissertation is a political and intellectual history of the rise of investigative journalism in Mexico City. 

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Heidi Hart is a singer and a Pushcart Prize-winning poet with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. As a second-year doctoral student in German Studies at Duke University-UNC Chapel Hill, she focuses on intersections of music, literature, and violence. In the past year she has taught creative writing as a Duke University Helga Bessent Fellow in Berlin and presented a paper on Hanns Eisler’s setting of Brecht’s “An die Nachgeborenen” at the Word and Music Association Forum conference in Stockholm. Heidi currently serves as a poetry editor for Toadlily Press in New York and for the transatlantic German Studies journal andererseits.

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Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";}

800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Adrienne Krone is a doctoral student in the American Religion track of the Graduate Program in Religion.  She specializes in the intersections between religion and culture in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her dissertation, titled "American Manna: Religious Foodways in the Contemporary Melting Pot," focuses on the multifaceted development and current state of the vast web of religious food reform movements.  

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Please visit her website,  www.adriennekrone.com for more information.

Annegret Oehme is a graduate student in the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies. She received her B.A. in Jewish Studies and her M.A. in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature and Language from Freie Universität in Berlin. During her time in Berlin Annegret transliterated and edited Middle Dutch sermon tracts as a research assistant for Dr. Norbert Winkler and worked as teaching assistant for Middle High German and medieval literature. Her research interests include medieval and early modern German and Yiddish literature. Currently she is working on space and identity in Paris un Viene, a Yiddish novel from 16th century Italy.
 
Normal 0 false false false IT JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:IT;} Giuseppe Prigiotti is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Romance Studies. He received an M.A. in Italian with a graduate certificate in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.A. in Religious Pedagogy at Università Pontificia Salesiana, Rome. He earned a Laurea in Philosophy (Philosophy and History) at Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy. His research interests include Jewish-Christian relations and religion in Italian culture. Starting from the critical reading of Jewish and Christian Italian journals from the Risorgimento, his dissertation will explore, in a dialogic perspective, cultural and religious interconnections between Jewish and Christian communities in Italy. He has published in the Waldensian Bulletin a reduction of his archival reconstruction of the first evangelical community in Catania during the Risorgimento.
 

Paola Reyes is a second year PhD student in the history department. Her research examines World War II land expropriations among Germans, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in Guatemala and Mexico, as part of anti-Axis war initiatives. Before coming to Duke, she received an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University and a B.A. in history and psychology from Wellesley College.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 As a first year M.A. student in the Department of Religion, Nick is interested in the interpretation, redaction, and translation of the Hebrew Bible in the Greco-Roman period. His interests span the text-critical use of the Septuagint (viz., Lucianic strata), Syriac literature (the Peshitta, Eastern Patristics), Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the import of Greek language and culture into the aforementioned recensions.

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Emma Woelk received her B.A. in German Studies from Vassar College in 2008.  Before starting the Join Program, she spent a year in Berlin and a year in her hometown, Austin.  While in Berlin, Emma researched disability policy in the GDR and she hopes to continue studying East German cultural history.  In Austin, Emma worked at a bilingual English-Spanish preschool.  She is enjoying being surrounded by German again and getting to know Durham.  Emma's past research in German Studies has included work on young adult literature, race in 20th century Germany, and history of science in Germany.  The Joint Program has allowed her to explore much earlier periods of German literary history and start to learn Old Yiddish.  When not in the German Department, Emma can be found running in Durham or looking for craft supplies at the Scrap Exchange.