Rachel Kaufman

PhD candidate

Rachel Kaufman is a poet, teacher, and PhD candidate in Latin American and Jewish history at UCLA. Her work explores diasporic memory, transmission, and violence and argues for the power of poetry as historical method. Her dissertation places conversas in their colonial context in New Spain, examining global trade networks, the transatlantic slave trade, and cross-community cultural and religious exchange amongst women. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming on poets.org and in The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books, Otiyot (Ayin Press), Jabberwock Review, Rethinking History, The Yale Historical Review, Diagram, Comedia Performance, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, and Colonial Latin American Review. The author of poetry collection, Many to Remember (2021), her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Huntington Library, Clark Library, Willapa Bay AiR, and Fulbright-Hays Program.