Rachel Oberter

Biography

I came to Haverford in the fall of 2008 by way of the University of North Carolina, where I was a Visiting Scholar. I hold a B.A. in Art History from Williams College and a Ph.D. in History of Art from Yale University (2007).   At Yale, I completed a dissertation entitled “Spiritualism and the Visual Imagination in Victorian Britain,” which forms the basis of my current book project. During my first year at Haverford I participated in the faculty seminar "Visual and Verbal Technologies: The Illustrated Book."  This spring I will be organizing a symposium at Haverford entitled, “Mediums, Media, Mediation: Visual Culture and Haunted Modernities.”

Education

B.A. Williams College

M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D., Yale University

Research

My work focuses on religion, gender, and the intersection of the visual and the verbal in nineteenth and early twentieth-century European art.

Selected publications:

“The Sublimation of Matter into Spirit’: Automatic Drawing and Spiritualist Thought,” in Ashgate Research Companion to Spiritualism and the Occult, eds. Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn, Ashgate Press: Aldershot, England, expected Dec. 2010 (forthcoming)

“Esoteric Art Confronting the Public Eye: The Abstract Spirit Drawings of Georgiana Houghton.” Victorian Studies 48 (Winter 2006): 221-32.

“The Rebel Queen and Constructions of Jewish Identity in Late Victorian Britain.” In “The Cultural and Historical Stabilities and Instabilities of Jewish Orientalism.” Ed. Ranen Omer-Sherman. Special issue, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (Winter 2006): 33-54.

Courses: Fall 2009, Haverford

Courses: Spring 2010, Haverford