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Jacob Ferrier
MA Student in Religious Studies
Jacob Ferrier is a second-year master’s student in the department of Religious Studies studying Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity. Jacob’s research interests span the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and archaeology of the ancient Near East. Before studying at UVA, he earned a master’s and bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics along with a bachelor’s in Mathematics and Religious Studies. Jacob serves as one of the graduate student assistants for the Jewish Studies program in addition to being a Manin Fellow. Outside of the university, Jacob is involved in the Jewish community in Charlottesville and enjoys climbing, backpacking, and playing music.
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Noelle Mendelson
BA Student in History and Media Studies
Noelle is a 4th year from Connecticut majoring in history and media studies. Noelle works for the Jewish Studies Program as a communications and design intern, and also as a research assistant for media studies professor Aynne Kokas, studying China-U.S. tech relations. She was previously a tour guide at Monticello and is well-versed in the history of Thomas Jefferson. For the past three years, she has held the role of marketing intern for UVA’s Hillel. Noelle hopes to pursue a career in the field of user experience design or media production.
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Sarah Denne
PhD Student in Religious Studies
Sarah is a second year PhD student in the religious studies department where her work centers around questions of the ethics of suffering and evil in modern thought. She completed a masters at the University of Chicago Divinity school where she studied critical theory and first-person Holocaust testimonies. Currently, she is interested in the intersection of modern Jewish and Christian thought with literary narratives about subjectivity and evil. In past work, she has written about self-formation, mystical responses to suffering, and dehumanization, focusing on philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Stanley Cavell, and Paul Ricoeur. Primarily, she is interested in the ways in which extreme experiences challenge Western philosophical conceptions of the self, freedom, and ethics.