Jennifer Westerfeld

About

Dr. Westerfeld joined the faculty in 2010, having received her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. She specializes in the cultural and religious history of late antique Egypt, Coptic epigraphy, and papyrology. Her research deals with the appropriation and reinterpretation of pharaonic monuments by Coptic Christian communities in Late Antiquity. Her first book, Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination, was published in November 2019 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Current projects include chapters on Roman and Byzantine Egypt for a new Egyptian history textbook and an in-depth study of the 18th-century French Jesuit missionary and explorer Claude Sicard. Dr. Westerfeld is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department and the Director of the Certificate Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Courses taught include:

Introduction to Ancient Egypt
Ancient Near East
Women in the Ancient World
Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity
Landscape and Memory in Late Antiquity
Egypt in the Western Imagination
Cleopatra: History and Myth
Research Methods (HIST 605)

Education

B.A., M.A., Ph.D. University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Recent Publications

Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

“Recovering Late Antique Abydos: A Review of Scholarship from the Enlightenment to World War II.” In Late Antique Abydos, edited by Elisabeth R. O’Connell. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan. Leuven, Peeters (forthcoming 2019).

“A Desert Hermitage South of Abydos: Preliminary Work of the Abydos Survey for Paleolithic Sites, Historic Division.” Co-authored with Dawn McCormack. In Late Antique Abydos, edited by Elisabeth R. O’Connell. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan. Leuven, Peeters (forthcoming 2019).

“Revisiting the Egyptian Memnon: Landscape and Memory in Western Thebes.” In Essays for the Library of Seshat: Studies Presented to Janet H. Johnson on the Occasion of her 70^th Birthday, edited by Robert K. Ritner, 405–16. Chicago: Oriental Institute Museum Press, 2018.

“Monastic Graffiti in Context: The Temple of Seti I at Abydos.” In Writing and Communication in Early Egyptian Monasticism, edited by Malcolm Choat and Mariachiara Giorda, 187-212. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

“Decipherment and Translation: An Egyptological Perspective.” In “Translation in the Global Humanities,” edited by Pamela Beattie, Simona Bertacco, and Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe. Special issue, CR: The New Centennial Review 16:1 (2016): 29-35.

“A Coptic Letter Referring to the Bishop of Babylon.” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 50 (2013): 171-181.

“Saints in the Caesareum: Remembering Temple-Conversion in Late Antique Hermopolis,” in Memory and Urban Religion in the Ancient World, edited by Martin Bommas, Juliette Harrison, 59-85. Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity 2. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies

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