Celine Parreñas Shimizu Honored for Mentoring Students in Asian American Studies

Celine Parreñas Shimizu has won the 2022 Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Dr. Shimizu is dean of the Division of Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was honored by the association for mentoring countless undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and colleagues over the past two decades.

“It is because of the mentorship I received — the confidence-building, career-launching, field-breaking advice, and the support of programs that enabled underrepresented people to enter the academy — that I am inspired to create mentorship programs wherever I am,” Dr. Shimizu said.

Dr. Shimizu is formerly a professor and director of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University and a professor of Asian American, feminist, and film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Professor Shimizu is the author of The Proximity of Other Skins: Ethical Intimacy in Global Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2020), Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies (Stanford University Press, 2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene (Duke University Press, 2007).

Professor Shimizu is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in ethnic studies. She holds a master of fine arts degree in film directing and production from the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in modern thought and literature from Stanford University.