Danielle Feldberg at the New York Historical, where she interned. Photo by Taylor Ha
When Danielle Feldberg transferred to Fordham as a sophomore, she was looking for her place in a new community. She ended up finding her calling.
How? By helping her classmates adjust to college life and pairing religious studies and philosophy with a hands-on internship in New York City.
Finding Her Footing as a Resident Assistant
“I basically fell into jobs that had to do with planning events,” she says, “and I realized how much I liked interacting with people—and making ideas become tangible.”
One of those jobs was as a resident assistant in the dorms. She applied for that role after her first semester on campus. As an RA, she lived with first-year students and learned to connect with people from diverse backgrounds. By summer, she was also a Global Transition coordinator, helping international students get settled in Fordham’s New York.
Both roles taught her to communicate professionally, stay calm under pressure, and hold her own around supervisors—skills she would carry into her first internship.
Into the Galleries of the New York Historical
When Feldberg spotted a Fordham-students-only internship at the New York Historical—just blocks from campus—she jumped on the opportunity. “I already love this museum,” she remembers thinking.
As a special events development intern, she helped run openings for major exhibitions—coordinating with caterers, connecting with museum donors, and filming for social media.
Watching descendants of Dutch settlers move through the Old Masters, New Amsterdam exhibit, she saw firsthand how meaningful it is to people to feel connected to New York City history.
Her coursework sharpened that understanding. Walking through galleries spanning Indigenous life, Dutch settlement, British colonization, and the American Revolution, Feldberg saw how complex, competing philosophies shaped New York City. “It wasn’t just artifacts on display, but entire ideas that go along with these artifacts—entire philosophies and entire ways of life.”
I learned that I genuinely enjoy work that brings people together to learn and creates meaningful experiences for others.
Documenting NYC’s Living History
The internship inspired Feldberg to attend public talks and events hosted by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture. “It just became a place I felt really comfortable and felt like I learned a lot,” she says.
Now a Duffy Fellow, a research position funded by the center, Feldberg is taking her passion for cultural preservation to the streets of New York. She’s working on an installation of photographs documenting Shabbat observances across the city’s many Jewish communities—“the Jews from the Soviet Union, the ones from Morocco, the Mizrahi Jews, the Ashkenazi Jews.”
To capture cultures spanning thousands of years, she’s using the platinum-palladium printing process favored by archivists for its longevity. “These photos last a really long time, so it kind of feels like it mirrors” the religious traditions.
For Feldberg, the project is the culmination of her Fordham experience. “I learned that I genuinely enjoy work that brings people together to learn and creates meaningful experiences for others,” she says—whether in the galleries of the New York Historical or the communities of New York City.