Rachel excavating at Samothrace, Greece with the theatral area near the Propylon of Ptolemy II in the background.

I participated in Colgate's terrific study group in Venice the autumn of my junior year which Rebecca Ammerman directed and then was lucky enough to return to Italy with her the following summer, funded by a Student Humanities Summer Research Stipend. During the summer, I assisted Professor Ammerman with her archaeological research at Paestum and was able to study firsthand the remarkable tomb paintings from this ancient site in southern Italy. The Paestan tombs with their lively images of chariot racing, bloody duels, and funerary rituals become the focus of my research for my senior thesis in art history for the next six months. Both experiences in Italy had a tremendous influence on my future since I decided after returning from my trips that I wanted to pursue art history after graduation and find a research topic that would bring me back to Italy. I am now a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. My research, which focuses on seventeenth-century Bolognese and Roman painting, brings me back to Italy often. I have also been awarded various travel grants in graduate school that have brought me farther afield. A few summers ago, for instance, I was able to participate in the excavations at the Sanctuary of the Great Gods in Samothrace, an island in northern Greece, which tied into my minor field in Greek sculpture. More recently, I was awarded a yearlong travel fellowship, the Theodore Rousseau Fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for my dissertation research on "The Young Guido Reni and His Artistic Milieu in Bologna and Rome,1595-1615." On this fellowship, I traveled to London, St. Petersburg, Paris, Berlin, among other places, and then spent a productive ten-months in Bologna and Rome. Needless to say, I am grateful to have been introduced to serious academic research, not to mention rewarding travel experiences by my study of art and archaeology at Colgate.

PUBLIC LECTURES/CONFERENCES

"Jean Siméon Chardin" Annual Friends Lecture, Oklahoma City Art Museum, May 2001

"Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draftsmen of the Renaissance," gallery talks, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Spring 2001

"Chardin," gallery talks, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Summer 2000

"Social Status in the Painted Tombs of Lucanian Paestum" National Conference of Undergraduate Research, Union College, New York, May 1995