Center for Jewish StudiesThe Shatzmiller Graduate Fellows honor Emeritus Smart Professor Joseph Shatzmiller, who taught at Duke University from 1994 to 2010. Among his many publications, he is best known for Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society and Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society. Fellowships offer advanced graduate students the opportunity to engage with prominent national and international scholars in Jewish Studies visiting the seminar and to connect with the Jewish Studies faculty active in the seminar. Fellows receive a research stipend and a seminar session devoted to their work.
2024-25 Shatzmiller Fellows
Criss Beyers Criss Beyers is a third-year Public History PhD student at North Carolina State University. His dissertation will explore the evolution of the Holocaust museological landscape in Poland since the Solidarity movement began in 1980. Prior to starting his PhD, Criss worked as a Holocaust educator at the Zekelman Holocaust Center and the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina. He has significant experience working with prominent Jewish cultural institutions in the United States and Poland, including YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Galicia Jewish Museum. Criss received his BA in Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures from Indiana University Bloomington, and his MA in Museum Studies from New York University.
Maria Cook Maria Cook is a second-year MDiv student at Duke Divinity School. Her research interests include the Jewish and Christian reception of Platonism, the use of the Hebrew Bible in early Christian writings, and artistic interpretations of Biblical themes and narratives. Maria is also a poet, artist, and musician and serves as the Chancellor of the Arts for New Creations Arts.
Ashley Low is a third year PhD student of American History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research interests include Southern Jewish culture, museum studies, transnational community, art, and interdisciplinary approaches. Her dissertation is an exploration of Southern Jewish identity in North Carolina rooted in material culture and place-based public memory.
Jakob Ware is a first-year History PhD student at Duke University. Previously, he earned a History MA at North Carolina State University where he also completed a BA in History and English Language & Rhetoric. Ware's research interests include the formation of a Hungarian national identity during the Long Nineteenth Century. He is interested in how certain Jewish populations sought to assimilate themselves into Hungarian society by declaring themselves to be 'Hungarians of the Israelite Faith.' His current research examines how Hungarian Jews used pistol and sabre duels to assert their masculinity and their Hungarian identities. Ware also has an interest in Art History regarding nationalistic art and in Military History regarding the roles of ethno-religious minorities.