Advisor: Dr. Claire Fanger

Zach Schwarze is a doctoral student in the Department of Religion at Rice University. The foci of his research are visionary experiences and attendant productions of images; magic and Catholicism in Texas, Mexico, and Spain; epistemology and religion; and history of culture.

Schwarze's past work concerns visual art and visionary experiences in late modern Europe, culminating in a master's thesis, "Of Light and Empty Space: Hilma af Klint's "Flowers, Mosses, and Lichens."" Therein, he offers the first sustained academic study of a notebook of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), which positions the artist within the epistemic history of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and late modern occultism generally.