Rachel Middleman

Rachel Middleman is Professor of Art History at California State University, Chico. She teaches courses in modern, contemporary, and American art history. She recently participated in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s Samuel H. Kress Teaching Fellowship for undergraduate teaching with primary sources. Dr. Middleman has a PhD in Art History with a Certificate in Visual Studies from the University of Southern California and a master's degree in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Middleman is the author of Radical Eroticism: Women, Art, and Sex in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2018). She has published in Art Journal, Les Cahiers du Musée National d’Art Moderne, Konsthistorisk tidskrift, and Woman’s Art Journal and contributed to edited volumes and exhibition catalogues, including Academics, Artists, and Museums: 21st-Century Partnerships (2018), Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, the Arts and the American West (2019); In the Cut: The Male Body in Feminist Art (2019); Women, Aging, and Art: A Crosscultural Anthology (2021); Joan Semmel: Skin in the Game (2021);and Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art (2021). She is executor of artist Anita Steckel’s estate and co-edited a special section of Art Journal titled "The Politics of Legacy" on the topic of artists' estates and art history. She recently co-curated Anita Steckel: The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics (2022) at the Stanford Art Gallery.