Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu Bios

Dean of the Arts

Distinguished Professor, Film & Digital Media


Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu standing on a pedestrian bridge

Phone: 831-459-4940

Email: artsdean@ucsc.edu

Celine Parreñas Shimizu, film scholar and filmmaker, is Dean of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. A premiere scholar of Asian American sexualities in representation, her books include The Movies of Racial Childhoods (Duke, 2024), The Proximity of Other Skins (Oxford, 2020), Straitjacket Sexualities (Stanford, 2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race (2007) which won Best Book in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies which also awarded her the 2022 Excellence in Mentorship Award. She co-edited The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness (2018). Her peer-reviewed articles appear in top journals in cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies, and transnational popular culture. Her writings are translated to French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Her recent films, The Celine Archive (2020) and 80 Years Later: On Japanese American Racial Inheritance (2022) each won several festival awards and are distributed by Women Make Movies. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, her M.F.A. in Film Directing and Production from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from U.C. Berkeley.


Short Bio

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Celine Parreñas Shimizu is Dean of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. An award-winning filmmaker and film scholar, her latest book is The Movies of Racial Childhoods (Duke, 2024) and her films include 80 Years Later: On Japanese American Racial Inheritance (Women Make Movies, 2022).

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Celine Parreñas Shimizu, film scholar and filmmaker, is Dean of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. A premiere scholar of Asian American sexualities in representation, her books include The Movies of Racial Childhoods (Duke, 2024), The Proximity of Other Skins (Oxford, 2020), Straitjacket Sexualities (Stanford, 2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race (2007) which won Best Book in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies which also awarded her the 2022 Excellence in Mentorship Award. She co-edited The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness (2018). Her peer-reviewed articles appear in top journals in cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies, and transnational popular culture. Her writings are translated to French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Her recent films, The Celine Archive (2020) and 80 Years Later: On Japanese American Racial Inheritance (2022) each won several festival awards and are distributed by Women Make Movies. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, her M.F.A. in Film Directing and Production from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from U.C. Berkeley.

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Celine Parreñas Shimizu, film scholar and filmmaker, is Dean of the Division of Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

She is well-known for her work on race, sexuality and representations. She wrote The Movies of Racial Childhoods (Duke, 2024), The Proximity of Other Skins (Oxford, 2020), Straitjacket Sexualities (Stanford, 2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race (Duke, 2007) which won Best Book in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. She co-edited The Feminist Porn Book (The Feminist Press, 2012) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness (ADVA Brill 2018). She served as Associate Editor of GLQ and Women Studies International Forum as well as founding USA Editor of Asian Diasporas and Visual Cultures. Her numerous peer-reviewed articles are published in the top journals in her field. Her research received funding from the Social Science Research Council and the Motion Picture Association of America and fellowships from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. Her writings have been translated to French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

An ethnographer and historian of images, she makes experimental narrative and fiction films. Her films 80 Years Later: On Japanese American Racial Inheritance (2022) screened at over 50 film festivals and won 20 awards, and The Celine Archive (2020) screened at over 20 film festivals and won 10 awards for best historical documentary and excellence in directing from various festivals. Both are distributed by the Women Make Movies (www.wmm.com).

In recent years, she won the Mentorship Award from the Association for Asian American Studies (2022) and was inducted into the Stanford University Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame (2023).

She received her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, her M.F.A. in Film Directing and Production from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from U.C. Berkeley. For more, go to www.celineshimizu.com.

Last modified: Aug 16, 2024