04/06/2026
Rachael Garcia is the winner of the 2025-26 Western Association of Graduate Schools (WAGS) and ProQuest Distinguished Master's Thesis Award in Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, and Business Disciplines.
Rachael’s award-winning research focuses on cinema giallo, a hybrid detective fiction, mystery thriller and surreal horror within the context of its parapolitical history.
When it came time to research a topic Rachael felt the lack of historical analysis of the film genre giallo led to misinterpretation and understanding of the plots of the films. Rachels says that her research delves into the world giallo films to better understand Italy and its political landscape of the time.
“It was the history of post-war covert activities that made me interested in this research,” said Rachael. “It's a strange and tangled web that involves election interference, shadow armies, assassinations, a neo-fascist parallel state, labor strikes, false flag terrorism, cover-ups, and a masonic lodge.”
Seeking truth through the filmmaker's lens became a throughline in Rachael’s research; the history of this time still reverberates into the present day. Rachael says the Italian filmmakers studied for this project used filmmaking to uncover the truth at a time when, truth, logic and justice had been fractured.
“I was trying to uncover a more truthful history, one that recognized that the dominant narratives we hear of violence are often blowbacks from the lesser-told narratives of State manipulation and aggression,” said Rachael. “I fell in love with giallo films through this process and am happy that they're receiving the recognition they deserve as cultural artifacts of the Years of Lead.”
Today Rachael is working in film production and continues to research giallo films. Under the encouragement of her committee, Rachael is urged to continue researching how understudied film movements in other countries reflect similar parapolitical histories during the Cold War.
