Rachael is a visual culture historian specialising in concepts of genders, bodies, and identities, particularly in relation to concepts of hybridity and the ‘monstrous’. Working across art, costume, and film from the mid-19th century to the present day, she explores bodies which blur boundaries not only of gender but between different forms of organic and inorganic matter. In other words, if it has strange, macabre, and/or composite creatures – from witches to cyborgs – Rachael will like it and probably use it in her teaching!
She has a particular interest in Surrealism and is a member of the editorial collective for the International Journal of Surrealism. Her surreal interests cluster around the artist, designer, and writer Leonor Fini, and she has published extensively on this little-known figure.
Rachael obtained her PhD in 2010 from the University of Glasgow, where her doctoral research explored the motif of the alchemical androgyne in Symbolist and Surrealist art. She has previously held a Lectureship at Plymouth University and teaching posts at The Glasgow School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, and the University of Glasgow before joining Loughborough University in 2016.
Rachael completed her postgraduate certificate in academic teaching practice in 2017 and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Her term-time office hours are Mondays 12-2. No appointment is required.
Rachael’s research employs feminist and posthumanist theory to explore depictions of hybrid, ambiguous bodies in flux, and the role of this in-between state in coding a body as ‘monstrous’.
More broadly, her interests include:
- Challenges to the concept of the human across all areas of visual culture.
- Histories and concepts of gender and the body from the 19th century to the present.
- The relationship between the human and other forms of matter.
- Surrealist art and design, including theatre and costume.
- Occult imagery in visual culture.
She is currently working on a monograph on Leonor Fini that attempts to develop a feminist art historiography of this marginalised artist, designer, and writer, mirroring the unstable bodies in Fini’s work by destabilising art historical taxonomies and methods of writing.
Rachael’s teaching practice is interdisciplinary, and she contributes to modules across the History, Liberal Arts, and Creative Arts programmes. Following her research, her teaching topics range from broad surveys of 20th-century visual culture to posthuman philosophy, to monstrous character design. She enjoys mixing different types of teaching together to create more engaging, interactive sessions.
Completed:
- 2022 Mikaela Assolent: A Disidentified Pedagogy: Contesting Audience Categorisations in Contemporary Art Institutions.
- 2021 Tom Nys: Contesting Abortion Stigma Through Contemporary Visual Art.
Current:
- Anna Kanunikova: Feminist Art History and the Female Russian Avant-Garde: Entanglements and Divergences
- Jema Hewitt: The construction of gender in designing robots and embodied AI.
- Tengjin Bian: Bodies in Flux: Posthuman Drag Arts and Performers in the Digital Age.
- ‘The occult, magic, and alchemy’ in K. Strom (ed.) The Routledge Companion to Surrealism, London; New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 46-52.
- ‘From one day to another: A ballet synopsis by Leonor Fini’, Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 90 (2), 2021, pp. 101-114.
- ‘Black goats and broomsticks: Feminism and the figure of the witch in Leonor Fini’s Le Sabbat’ in A. von Rosen and V. Kjellmer (eds.) Scenography and Art History, London: Bloomsbury, 2021, pp. 13-28.
- ‘Monstrous Bodies: Theatrical Designs by Salvador Dalí and Leonor Fini’, Studies in Costume and Performance, 4 (1), 2019, pp. 9-24.
- ‘A Creative Act: Leonor Fini and Dressing Up’, Woman’s Art Journal, 40 (1), 2019, pp. 13-20.
- ‘Feathers, Flowers, and Flux: Artifice in the Costumes of Leonor Fini’ in P. Allmer (ed.) Intersections: Women Artists / Surrealism / Modernism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 259-74.
- ‘States of Transition: The Femme Fatale in the Art of Fernand Khnopff and Leonor Fini’ in M. Facos and T. Mednick (eds.) The Symbolist Roots of Modernism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015, pp. 71-84.
- ‘Sphinxes, Witches and Little Girls: Reconsidering the Female Monster in the Art of Leonor Fini’ in E. Nelson with J. Burcar and H. Priest (eds.) Creating Humanity, Discovering Monstrosity: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil e-book, Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2010, pp. 97-106.