Celine Parreñas Shimizu works as a film scholar and film/videomaker. As Associate Professor
of Film and Video in Asian American Studies and Affiliate Faculty in Film and
Women’s Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, she
teaches popular culture, social theory, sexuality, transnational feminisms
and film theory as well as television and film production. She received her
Ph.D. from Stanford University in Modern Thought and Literature http://www.stanford.edu/dept/MTL/ (2001), her M.F.A. in Film Production and Directing from the UCLA School of
Theater, Film and Television http://www.tft.ucla.edu/ (1996) and her B.A. in
Ethnic Studies from the U.C. Berkeley http://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu (1992).
Her book THE HYPERSEXUALITY OF RACE: PERFORMING ASIAN/AMERICAN WOMEN ON SCREEN
AND SCENE is forthcoming from Duke University Press http://www.dukeupress.edu/.
The book analyses the production of sexuality for Asian women in western modern
moving image visual cultures such as early cinema, stag films, contemporary
pornography, Hollywood blockbusters, musicals and independent sexually explicit
media by Asian American women. Her publications include an interview entitled “Unashamed
To Be So Beautiful” in the Asian American Film Anthology COUNTERVISIONS
(Temple, 2000); “Sex Acts: Asian American Film Feminisms” with
filmmaker Helen Lee, in a special issue on film feminisms in the leading feminist
journal SIGNS (Chicago UP, 2004); “Theory In/ Of Practice” in PINAY
POWER, the Filipina American Feminist Theory Anthology (Routledge, 2005); “The
Bind of Representation” in THEATRE JOURNAL (May 2005) and “Queens
of Anal, Double, Triple and the Gangbang: Producing Asian/American Feminism
in Pornography” in THE YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM (June 2006).
Her new book MEN OF COLOR AND THE MOVING IMAGE SEX ACT focuses on the production
of sexuality for men of color in various transnational contexts. Two chapters
have been published in STANFORD BLACK ARTS QUARTERLY and the journal WIDE ANGLE.
An
internationally screened and award-winning filmmaker, her works include MAHAL
MEANS LOVE AND EXPENSIVE (1993), HER UPROOTING PLANTS HER (1995) and
SUPER FLIP (1997). Her recently completed digital film THE FACT OF ASIAN WOMEN
(2002) received the Best Documentary Short Prize at the Big Mini DV Festival
in New York, Best Picture—Women’s Issues at Zoie Fest, Winner in
Long Format-Education at the 2003 DV Awards and Best of Festival-Documentary
at the 2003 Berkeley International Film and Video Festival. She is currently
in pre-production for her next documentary BIRTHRIGHT about mothering in Santa
Barbara http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/birthright/ and developing the narrative film TWELVE ASIAN WOMEN, a psychosexual drama
and
ETHNIC STUDIES, a soap opera.
For her scholarship and film work, Dr. Parreñas
Shimizu has received many awards, fellowships, grants and honors including
the Social Science Research
Council Sexuality Research Fellowship http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/sexuality/,
the Stanford Asian American Studies Graduate Academic Award, the Edie and Lew
Wasserman Directing Fellowship, the James Pendleton Foundation Prize and the
Eisner Prize for Poetry—UC Berkeley’s highest award in the creative
arts.