Jennifer Westerfeld is an Egyptologist specializing in the cultural and religious history of Egypt in the Roman and Byzantine periods (30 BCE-642 CE). She received her BA, MA, and PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. 

• Director of Graduate Studies, University of Louisville History Department
• Director of the Certificate Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of Louisville Department of Interdisciplinary and Public Humanities
• President, Kentucky Society of the Archaeological institute of America

My research focuses on the reception of Egypt's ancient past in later periods; I examine the ways in which Christian communities in the Byzantine period reinterpreted the hieroglyphic writing system and reused ancient religious monuments for new purposes. I have carried out epigraphic fieldwork at various sites in Egypt and currently serve as Assistant Director of the Ibis Hypogeum Coptic Graffiti and Paintings Project, based in North Abydos. A secondary research interest is the history of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology as academic disciplines, and I have a long-term research project underway investigating the life and work of the early eighteenth-century French Jesuit missionary and Egyptologist Claude Sicard.

At the undergraduate level, I teach courses ranging from History of Civilizations-1 to surveys of ancient Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern History. I also teach Women in the Ancient World and upper-level seminars on reception history, including Cleopatra: History & Myth and Egypt in the Western Imagination. Recently I've started exploring the possibility of incorporating virtual reality technology into my courses, so if you take my classes you may find yourself with a headset on, "walking" through a virtual museum or 3D reconstruction of an archaeological site! At the graduate level, I regularly teach the History Department's intro to Research Methods for new MA students.

I am currently accepting graduate students in the following areas: Egyptology; Late Antiquity (Mediterranean focus); Reception History