Rachel Burk

Biography

Rachel Burk is an Associate Professor of Spanish, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages, and the Morrissy Honors Program Faculty Fellow. She has held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane, and the Universidad de Lisboa, where she spent a semester as a Fulbright Scholar, before coming to NDMU in 2014.

Dr. Burk teaches Spanish language at all levels including medical Spanish, Latin American and Iberian culture, introductory linguistics, early modern studies, and, as part of the honors program, NDMU 100 and NDMU 102. In addition to chairing Modern Languages for a decade, she served as interim Director of the Morrissy Honors Program during AY 25-26.

Education

• Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies, University of Pennsylvania M.A. in Hispanic Cultural Studies, Columbia University A.B. in English, Columbia University

Research

Interests

• Spanish language pedagogy, literary and cultural studies of early modern Iberia and colonial Latin America, anti-racist pedagogy, premodern critical race studies, gender studies, visual culture, theater and performance studies

Publications

1. “Grassroots Anti-Racism Faculty Learning Community: Confronting White Supremacy through Shared Leadership,” Faculty Learning Communities Working Towards a More Equitable, Just, and Anti-Racist Future in Higher Education, (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2023). With Jina Fast, Beth Ford, Mary Packard, Stephanie Savick, and Jennifer Wester.
2. “La puesta en escena de la limpieza de sangre en la España barroca,” De sangre y leche: raza y religión en el mundo ibérico, ed. Mercedes García Arenal and Felipe Pereda (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2021).
3. “Iberian Blood Purities” The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies, eds. Javier Muñoz-Bassols, Laura Lonsdale, and Manuel Delgado (London: Routledge, 2017).
4. “Materiality and Blood Purity in Cervantes’s Alcaná de Toledo,” The Cultural Politics of Blood, eds. Ralph Bauer, Kimberly Ann Coles, and Zita Nuñez (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2015).
5. “‘La patria consumida’: Blood, Nation, and Eucharist in Cervantes’s La Numancia,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 13.4 (2012), 1-19.

Presentations

• “Femicide on the Early Modern Spanish Stage,” Association for Hispanic Classical Theater, Los Angeles (September 2024)
• “Blood Purity and Bleeding Women in Early Modern Spanish Lyric Poetry,” Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Baltimore (October 2023)
• “Staging Blood Purity in Baroque Spain,” Virtual RSA Meeting (April 2021)
• “Teaching the History of the Body,” National Collegiate Honors Council Conference, New Orleans (November 2019)
• “Gender and Gore: Staging Blood Purity in Early Modern Spanish Theater,” Of Blood and Milk: Race and Religion in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Worlds Symposium (CORPI), Madrid (February 2019)
• “Gender and Gore: Staging Blood Purity in Early Modern Spanish Theater,” Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Albuquerque (November 2018)
• “Bodies and Broadsides: Columbus’s First Return to Europe,” Migrations: Body, Word, Mind, Spirit Conference, College Park (November 2017)
• “‘[L]a mujer, al fin, como sangría, / que a veces da salud y a veces mata’: Women, Lyric, and Blood Purity,” GEMELA, San Juan (September 2016) 2021) among other publications.

Professional Affiliations & Memberships

• American Association of University Professors
• Grupo de Estudios de la Mujer en España y las Américas (GEMELA)
• Modern Language Association
• Renaissance Society of America
• Sixteenth-Century Society.

Awards

• NDMU Committee for Faculty Research and Development awards for research, conferences, professional development, and sabbatical, 2015-20241 Fulbright Scholar (Portugal), Fall 2012
• NEH Summer Institute, Folger Library, Washington, DC, Summer 2010 University of Pennsylvania Franklin Fellowship, 2001-2006.