Rachel Kaufman
Biography
Rachel Kaufman is a poet, teacher, and PhD candidate in Latin American and Jewish history at UCLA. Her work explores diasporic memory, transmission, and violence and argues for the power of poetry as historical method. Her dissertation places conversas in their colonial context in New Spain, examining global trade networks, the transatlantic slave trade, and cross-community cultural and religious exchange amongst women. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming on poets.org and in The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books, Otiyot (Ayin Press), Jabberwock Review, Rethinking History, The Yale Historical Review, Diagram, Comedia Performance, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, and Colonial Latin American Review. The author of poetry collection, Many to Remember (2021), her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Huntington Library, Clark Library, Willapa Bay AiR, and Fulbright-Hays Program.
Publications
(2025): “Forging New Histories: Disembodiment, Multiplicity, and Nostalgia in Crypto-Jewish and Chicana Poetics,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 46(1): 144-174.
(2024): “A Mosaic of Exchange: History, Memory, and Representation of Women in the Borderlands Captivity Archive,” Colonial Latin American Review 33(3): 347-376. Winner of the 2025 CLAH Paul Vanderwood Prize and the 2025 Colonial Latin American Review Franklin Pease Memorial Prize.
(2023): “Sound and Sense: Poetic Form and Translating Sor Juana’s Amor es más laberinto.” Comedia Performance 20(1): 118–127.
(2023): “Crypto-Jewish Poetry in New Mexico, post 1992.” In Jews Across the Americas: 1492-Present. New York: NYU Press.
(2023): Love is the Greater Labyrinth: A Comedy by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta. (co-translator)
(2021): Many to Remember (Dos Madres Press) – Poetry Book
(2020): “Translating History,” Rethinking History
For more published poetry and prose, please visit: rachel-kaufman.com
