Rachel Blake (Pea) graduated from Duke University in 2010 with a B.A. in History and minors in Art History and Visual Studies. During college, she spent time working with an immigrant activist community on the US-Mexico border and worked to educate the university community about the human rights issues surrounding undocumented immigration. Her undergraduate honors thesis was titled, God or Country: How the US Sanctuary Movement Challenged the Boundary between Religion and Politics in Cold War America. Having grown up in North Carolina and Seattle, she wanted to experience life in a border state, and moved to Dallas, Texas after graduation to teach high school Spanish with Teach for America. Apart from her passions for reforming the public education system and US immigration policy, Rachel is interested in Cold War Latin America; specifically the way that liberation theology challenged the alliance between the Catholic Church and the powers that be. Her master’s thesis focuses on the influence of liberation theology on the Central American guerrilla armies of 1970s and 1980s.
