She received her Ph.D. from the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan in 2012. Previously, Rachel worked in documentary film distribution with California Newsreel. A love of the arts has led her to researching and writing about visual culture in Santo Domingo, and her scholarship more broadly focuses on how Dominican women in Santo Domingo think about their own transnational identities. She recently published the essay, “‘No tienes que entenderlo, solo respetalo’: Xiomara Fortuna, Racism, Feminism and Other Forces in the Dominican Republic” in The Black Scholar (Vol. 45, No. 3).