Rae French

MS Program

Research Areas:

History of Science, herbaria and natural history archives, crop cultivation, religion in the natural world, the visual culture of science

Biography:

Rae French is an MS student in Geography & Environmental Studies and holds a BFA in Art History from The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to relocating to New Mexico, she staffed DIY archives of agitprop and worked as a research assistant to the Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden processing historic pharmacological collections. She has held an assistantship with the UNM Herbarium at the Museum of Southwestern Biology and is a National Science Foundation Museum Research Trainee. Her research attends to the history of botanical science and horticulture as vehicles of authority, commerce, and ideology. In particular, she is interested in the story of apple cultivation in New Mexico and its role in cultural assimilation and local identity construction. Her interest in the History of Science’s relationship to visual culture and her archival experience has motivated her to relate collections across repositories disciplined as Cultural or Scientific.

Education:

BFA Art History, The University of Texas at Austin