Rachel Arteaga is Associate Director of the Simpson Center. In this role, she works closely with the faculty Director and in collaboration with all members of the Simpson Center staff on the development, implementation, and assessment of academic projects, initiatives, and programs central to its mission. Rachel is also a main point of contact for institutional partners in the region, particularly for questions pertaining to the development of new models for doctoral education and professionalization across sectors in the humanities.

Arteaga speaks and writes regularly on higher education and the value of the humanities. Her most recent project, a collection of essays she co-edited with Rosemary Johnsen titled Public Scholarship in Literary Studies, was published by Amherst College Press in April of 2021. The full text of the book—including its six distinct chapters, composed by contributing authors whose exemplary approaches to the publicly-engaged humanities have the potential to transform literary studies—is available through the open access platform Fulcrum. You can read her introduction to the volume here.

She has served on the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association (MLA) as a Delegate for Region 7, the Western United States and Western Canada, and on the Council of Advisors for the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC). She recently chaired the Association of Departments of English (ADE) Ad Hoc Committee on English Majors' Career Preparation and Outcomes and has served on planning and review committees for the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Humanities Washington, our state humanities council. 

Arteaga holds a PhD in English from the University of Washington and an MA in English from Boston College. Her dissertation, which she defended in June 2016, focused on feelings of faith—among them, hope, doubt, and joy—in American literature. Articles revised from chapters in the project have appeared in the scholarly journals the Flannery O'Connor Review, Literature Interpretation Theory, and Early American Literature.