Scenes from Graduation 2017-2018

Gregg Drinkwater
Gregg Drinkwater's fellowship will support his travel to Philadelphia to examine records related to Judaism’s Reconstructionist movement, and to interview several key stakeholders involved in Reconstructionist engagements with gay and lesbian Jews in the 1980s. Gregg will also spend time in New York to interview founding members of the city’s gay synagogue, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, as well as gay and lesbian Jews active in other grassroots gay and feminist Jewish groups in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Elana Lev Friedland
Elana Friedland, an MFA candidate in Creative Writing, was awarded a Barry and Sue Baer Graduate Fellowship to support their travel to Massachusetts to attend the TENT: Creative Writing workshop at the Yiddish Book Center. This past fall, Elana received a Baer Fellowship to support their performance piece, Sitting Seven Shivas. 

Amber Manning
Amber Manning received the Baer Fellowship this past Fall 2017 to support her trip to Prague to conduct research on the "Golem of Prague" narrative in. This relates directly to her thesis, Our Precious: Reclamation and the Golem in He, She and It and The Puttermesser Papers. Currently, Amber is working on a digital exhibit comparing the legacies of Rabbi Judah Loew and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.

Jacob Allen Flaws
Jacob Flaws, a doctoral candidate in History, has been awarded a Rabbi Daniel and Ida Goldberger Fellowship and a Global Initiatives Scholarship to travel to Warsaw, Poland to conduct research in the archives at the Jewish Historical Institute, the POLIN Museum, and the Siedlce branch of the Polish National Archives. His dissertation focuses on providing Polish and Jewish spatial perspectives of the Treblinka extermination camp.

Graduate

Elana Lev Friedland
Elana Friedland will use their ACE Jewish Arts Grant to support the creation and production of An Evening of Interfaith Cabaret. The performance will feature members of various faith traditions in embodied engagements with their faith backgrounds.

Undergraduate

Natania Marie Bloch, Erika Gujila, Jace Leigh Rosenthal, Sarah Elizabeth Schleifer
The ACE Jewish Arts Grant will go toward the publishing and distribution of the 21st Century Jewish Catalog, a collaborative project edited and compiled by Natania Marie Bloch, Erika Gulija, Jace Leigh Rosenthal, and Sarah Elizabeth Schleifer.

The 21st Century Jewish Catalog is a contemporary response to the Jewish Catalog series published in the 1970s by Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, and Sharon Strassfeld, and attempts to address new concerns and practices that have arisen within the Jewish-American community since the publication of the original Jewish Catalogs. The catalog will feature interviews with prominent members of the Denver/Boulder Jewish community, pieces written by Jews in the area, and new ritual practices gathered from classmates and community. They hope that the publication of the 21st Century Jewish Catalog will inspire intergenerational conversations about the ever-changing Jewish community and the wider society it inhabits.

Graduate

Jeffrey William Baron
Jeffrey Baron, an MA candidate in Religious Studies, was awarded a Jewish Studies Global Initiatives Scholarship to support his participation in an archeological excavation at Reccopolis in central Spain as part of his thesis research on the Visigoths. While in Spain, he will also conduct research at other architectural sites and archeological museums in Cordoba, Toledo, and Madrid.

Jacob Allen Flaws
With the Global Initiatives Scholarship and the Rabbi Daniel and Ida Goldberger Fellowship, Jacob will travel to and conduct research in Warsaw, Poland over several weeks during the Fall 2018 semester. He will be doing research in the archives at the Jewish Historical Institute, the POLIN Museum, and the Siedlce branch of the Polish National Archives. This research will help provide Polish and Jewish spatial perspectives of the Treblinka extermination camp, which is the focus of Jacob's dissertation.

Mark Simon Joseph
Mark Joseph, an MA candidate in Religious Studies, was awarded a Jewish Studies Global Initiatives Scholarship to support his travels to Israel/Palestine, where he will be collecting musical and poetical contributions related to the possibility of coexistence in the region. He will be editing and collating collected pieces into a sound collage and incorporating them into a musical composition.

Undergraduate

Adam Marcus Austin
The Global Iniatives Scholarship was awarded to Adam to aid in his study abroad at Tel Aviv Univeristy. He will attend two months of Ulpan to solidify his Hebrew and take additonal Jewish Studies courses.

Paige Elizabeth Segall
Paige Segall is currently studying at Tel Aviv University and will be there for an additional semester during Fall 2018 with the help of the Global Initiatives Scholarship. During her time in Israel, Paige is taking full advantage of abundance of Jewish Studies courses offered to her. This opportunity has allowed her to immerse herself in the Hebrew language and first hand learn the history of the Jewish people.

Emily Frazier-Rath
Emily Frazier-Rath, a PhD Candidate in German Studies, will be focusing her first post-dissertation project on the intersections between Jewish and Roma activism in post-war Germany that center on remembering the Holocaust/Porajmos. Her summer research in the PHAJ collections will provide her context for her research from the Holocaust through the postwar Jewish resurgence period to the relative present.

Kelley Ann Walsh
Kelly Walsh, an MFA candidate in Dance, focuses her research on the contributions of Jewish-Appalachians to Appalachian dance and culture and the reasons why Jewish-Appalachian population is declining despite the overall increase of the Jewish population in the United States. Kelley’s research in the PHAJ Collections will provide her with a richer understanding of the post-Holocaust American Jewish experience. 

Jacob Allen Flaws

Jacob will focus his summer archival research in the Harry W. Mazal Holocaust Collections and will focus on producing a project to showcase how the collection contains materials on many diverse topics – not solely on the Holocaust – and therefore holds value for all types of researchers.

Jace Leigh Rosenthal
This year the Katherine Jacob Lamont Scholarship was awarded to Jace Rosenthal. Jace is a pursuing majors in Jewish Studies, English, and Religious Studies. He believes that Jewish Studies has enabled him to engage with topics across a range of disciplines, intersecting with his interests in literary, historical, and cultural methodologies. Jace feels privilege to be part of a department that uplifts its students, providing significant research and internship opportunities. "The Katherine Jacob Lamont Scholarship reflects the interests of the Jewish Studies program through its focus on interdisciplinary study within the humanities," Jace says. In future semesters, he intend to pursue research through the Program in Jewish Studies with support from its associated faculty.

Natania Marie Bloch
Natania Bloch is this year’s Baer Scholar. Natania is pursuing a double major in Jewish Studies and History, with Minors in Biochemistry and Communication, and a certificate in Pre-Health. Natania is committed to exploring the roots of Jewish traditions and norms and tying her interest in Jewish Studies to her future career aspirations in the medical field so that she might become a more successful and well-rounded doctor. In addition to her studies, Natania is also part of the CU V-Day Warriors and the CU Honors Program, and this coming academic year, will be a member of the Jewish Studies Student Advisory Board.

Two students, Jenna Solomon and Marnina Goldberg, were the recipients of the inaugural Jewish Studies Freshman and Sophomore scholarship, a tuition scholarship that rewards academic merit of freshman and sophomore students pursuing a Jewish Studies major or minor.

Ellen Marie Gostling
Ellen was the inaugural recipient of the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections Undergraduate Scholarship this Spring 2018. She conducted research in the collections and worked on creating a digital resource and research guide related to conversion practices during and after the Holocaust framed by Harry W. Mazal’s own experience. Ellen was interested in the PHAJ Collections because so much of history has been shaped by the conflict of the Holocaust.