Rachel is a graduate student in the Department of Religions and Ancient Civilizations, as well as a graduate degree fellow at the East-West Center. She spent much of her early life running feral through the swamps, forests, and prairies of rural Missouri. Now, as then, her perspective is defined through her relationship with the more-than-human world. When not at university, she works as a naturalist, adventure guide, and conservationist.
Her academic interests include the symbolic construction of place; pilgrimage, the chthonic realm, and geomancy. Her current research is on the embedded sacredness of the Himalayan Buddhist landscape, specifically Nyingma and Bon communities in the trans-Himalayan area of Nepal. Her language specializations are Colloquial and Classical Tibetan, Nepali, and Sanskrit.
Before coming to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, she earned a BA in Tibetan Buddhist Philology from Rangjung Yeshe Institute, the Buddhist Studies Center of Kathmandu University. During her years in Nepal, she worked with and learned from Tibetan Buddhists living in diaspora near the Boudhanath Stupa.
Email: rsee@hawaii.edu