Rachel Harper, Ph.D.
Curriculum Specialist
Rachel Harper is an artist whose primary medium is curriculum. She teaches here at the Museum of Contemporary Art and in the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago museum, and is Lecturer in the Arts Administration graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rachel teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum Studies, the recipient of the Ann Lynn Lopez Schubert Memorial Fellowship in Curriculum Studies, and the Chair of the Chicago Curriculum Studies Student Symposium. Her arts-based dissertation-in-progress, "On Reverie" explores the immersive experiences of reverie-- love, humor, creative flow, and play-- that enable the growth of the mind. She exhibits visual art, music, and works for theatre nationally. Rachel is the recipient of the 2015 3Arts Teaching Artist Fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation where she will be in residence this summer.
Rachel's interdisciplinary BFA and MA in Art Education are both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which she was also awarded the 2011 Fellowship in Art Education for her thesis study on early childhood art museum education. Her classroom experience is at the early childhood level and she reviews K-12 curriculum for the Chicago Public Schools. Rachel consults on curriculum for the Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago and for Visual Art Education at DePaul University. Rachel is an activist for equity in schools and organizes with Chicago's Teachers for Social Justice. Her first book for teachers, "Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality," will be published this fall by Rethinking Schools. Recent publications are articles in the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, the Journal of the Society of the Professors of Education, and Visual Arts Research. Rachel presents at national education conferences, consults nationally with education departments of art museums, and co-authored "The Subject Matters of the Arts" in the forthcoming Sage Guide to Curriculum in Education.
