She researches visual collective memory in news photography, documentary and feature films, and in television news. Her work on mediated collective memories has appeared in Journalism and Visual Studies and has been featured on NPR’s On the Media. Currently, she is working on a paper about the representation of the Holocaust and postmemory in Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel and an analysis of how U.S. television news commemorated anniversaries of the Berlin Wall’s opening from 1990 through 2009. Rachel also writes about photography and visual culture for Afterimage, ART + AUCTION, and Guernica: A Journal of Art & Politics, among other publications. She holds a Ph.D. in mass communications from Syracuse University, an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, and a B.A. in English and history from Cornell University.