Rachel Quist
- PhD Candidate
- Japanese Buddhist sculpture, Nara through Kamakura
- Chinese Buddhist sculpture, Tang through Song
- Japanese prints, Edo through the present
Contact Info
Biography —
Rachel Quist is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Kansas and a 2023 Dissertation Fellow for The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies. Her research focuses on premodern Japanese and Chinese Buddhist imagery, as well as early modern to modern Japanese prints. In 2021, Rachel received a Fulbright-Hays fellowship to conduct fieldwork for her dissertation, “Forging Bonds through Icons and Ritual: Imperial Patronage of Daigoji.” This dissertation investigates Buddhist sculpture from the tenth to the twelfth centuries at the Kyoto-based temple Daigoji. Her research explores the intersections between religion, politics, healing practices, and the natural world in premodern Japan, examining the way these systems interact with material culture.
Rachel is a co-founder of the department’s student-led DEAI committee. Her article, “Understanding the Collector through the Collection: A Study of the Thayer Palace-style Shrine,” is published in Perspectives on a Legacy Collection: Sallie Casey Thayer’s Gift to the University of Kansas (2020). In 2019, she curated Porcelains of Dehua: From Regional Kilns to Global Markets, an installation of Ming- and Qing-era ceramics from Dehua, China, at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.