Serena Bazemore

Serena Bazemore is the Executive Director of the Duke Center for Jewish Studies. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MA from the NC State University, where her thesis “The Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Religion of Intent: Interiority and the Emergence of Selfhood Across Religious Boundaries” explored the intersection of Jewish and Christian medieval culture and religiosity. She is currently working on her PhD in Public History at North Carolina State University and is more broadly interested in religiosity, gender and performative theory, US and Middle Eastern foreign policy, and the role of higher education in contemporary society. In addition to the administrative running of Duke CJS, she serves as an undergraduate academic advisor at Duke, is the coordinator of the North Carolina Jewish Studies Seminar, and serves on the board of Jewish Heritage of North Carolina.

When she is not organizing an event at Duke CJS, she spends time with her husband and daughter, and their three dogs.