DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Rachel Levy is a doctoral candidate in Buddhist Studies. As an MA student in Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University, her research examined Tibetan portraiture within the framework of Buddhist relic traditions. Her current research continues to foreground questions of representation, materiality, ritual, and embodiment. Her dissertation examines the role clothing plays in the lives of seventeenth-century yogins in the Drukpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Drawing on biographies, ritual manuals, and visual representations, she studies the ways clothing enables or hinders spiritual attainments and serves as a discursive tool for interpreting and authenticating those attainments. Her advisor is Sarah Jacoby.