Elizabeth Ferauge

Elizabeth Ferauge

Research Interest

Education

MA, Comparative Religion, University of Washington
MA, Counseling Psychology, The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
BA, Psychology, McGill University

Biography

Elizabeth’s (Liz) current research centers on death and material culture in Jewish and Christian traditions in a longue durée comparative perspective. She is particularly interested in the ways in which religious conceptions of the human body and its mortality inflect different burial practices and other material engagements with death, especially in France and Western Europe. She has strong secondary research interests in death and the body in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East, as well as representations of religious themes and narratives in contemporary cinema with a focus on horror and related genres.

Before coming to Columbia University, Liz received an MA in Comparative Religion from the University of Washington focused on death and mortuary culture in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern Religions and Ancient Judaism. She was the 2022-2023 Max Sarason Fellow at the University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, wherein her project focused on Jewish Horror Films. (The new wave of Jewish horror: Ancient folklore (and a child-stealing demoness) in modern movies - UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies (washington.edu)) Liz has taught classes on Religion in Modern Horror Films, as well as Demons and Demonology, for the University of Washington’s Comparative History of Ideas program. She also holds an MA in Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.