Rachel Middleman

Spring '23 Office Hours
R 11:30-1:30pm Zoom/in Person by Appointment

Rachel Middleman is Associate Professor of Art History at California State University, Chico. She teaches courses in modern, contemporary, and American art history. As Dr. Middleman's research on contemporary art focuses on instances of social intervention and aesthetic innovation, these interests inform the content of her courses and teaching strategies. With the support of a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art, Dr. Middleman received her PhD from the University of Southern California, along with a Certificate in Visual Studies, from a program that emphasized interdisciplinary theories of the visual. She earned her master's degree in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also serves as the executor of feminist artist Anita Steckel's estate.

Dr. Middleman is the author of Radical Eroticism: Women, Art, and Sex in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2018). She received a Smithsonian American Art Museum Postdoctoral Fellowship to complete this book. She has published articles in Art Journal, Woman's Art Journal, and the Swedish art history journal Konsthistorisk tidskrift, and co-edited a special section of Art Journal titled "The Politics of Legacy" on the topic of artists' estates and art history.

Dr. Middleman has also contributed to the edited volumes and exhibition catalogues, including Academics, Artists, and Museums: 21^st-Century Partnerships (Routledge, 2018), Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, the Arts and the American West (Fulgur, 2019), In the Cut: The Male Body in Feminist Art (Kerber Verlag, 2019), Women, Aging, and Art: A Crosscultural Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2021), Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art (Minneapolis Institute of Art and University of Chicago, 2021), Joan Semmel: Skin in the Game (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2021).