Ph.D., Cinema Studies, New York University M.A., Cinema Studies, New York University B.A., Cinema Studies, University of Toronto
A leading expert on women and film history, Shelley Stamp is author of the award-winning books Lois Weber in Early Hollywood and Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon, as well as many articles and book chapters on histories of movie-going, film censorship and women’s filmmaking. She is curator of the award-winning box set Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers and her expert commentary is frequently featured on DVD/Blu-ray releases of rare silent films. She is Founding Editor of the journal Feminist Media Histories, published quarterly by UC Press, and now edits the Feminist Media Histories book series for UC Press. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Stamp has been a visiting scholar at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Bryn Mawr College, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Queen’s University in Canada, and the Hildegard Festival of Women in the Arts. She has lectured widely on her work throughout North America and Europe, as well as in Australia, China and Japan. Stamp is Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz, where she has twice won the Excellence in Teaching Award.
Feminist film histories and histories of moviegoing and movie culture.
Film history, feminist approaches, female filmmakers
Presidential Chair, UC Santa Cruz, 2018-21
Excellence in Teaching Award, UC Santa Cruz, 2019
Pavel Machotka Chair in Creative Studies, UC Santa Cruz, 2014-17
Macgeorge Visiting Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia, 2013
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2012
Film Scholars Grant, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2003
University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, 2001
Hon. Mention, Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Prize, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 1998
Excellence in Teaching Award, UC Santa Cruz, 1997
Screen Award for Excellence in Screen Studies (Joint Winner), 1995
First Runner-Up, Dissertation Prize, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 1995
Jay Leyda Memorial Dissertation Prize, New York University, 1994
BOOKS & EDITED COLLECTIONS:
Lois Weber in Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2015)
Michael Nelson Book Prize, International Association for Media and History
Richard Wall Special Jury Prize, Theatre Library Association
Best Film Books of 2015, Huffington Post
Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon (Princeton University Press, 2000)
Finalist, Theatre Library Association Book Award
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
American Cinema's Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices, co-edited with Charlie Keil (University of California Press, 2004).
SELECTED RECENT ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS:
"'I Want Big Things': Beauty Merchandising and Noir's 'Femme Fans'." In The Routledge Companion to American Film History. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Paula S. Massood. Forthcoming from Routledge.
"Selling Noir's 'Red Meat' to the Female Market." In The Oxford Handbook of American Film History. Ed. Jon Lewis. Forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
"Eleanor's Catch." In The Teaching Companion to Silent Film. Ed. Liz Clarke and Martin Johnson. Forthcoming from Routledge.
"Curiosity Seekers, Morbid Minds, and Embarrassed Young Ladies: Female Audiences and Reproductive Politics Onscreen." In The Oxford Hanbook of Silent Cinema. Ed. Charlie Keil and Rob King. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.
"Hortense Powdermaker." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies. Ed. Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten and Carola A. Stabile. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.
"FIAF Symposium: Women, Cinema and Archives." Feminist Media Histories 10, no. 2-3 (2024).
"What Happened to Women in Histories of Hollywood?" Journal of Women's History 33, no. 3 (2021).
"Film Noir's 'Gal Producers' and the Female Market," Women's History Review 29, no. 5 (2020): 201-821.
“Critics, Reformers, and Educators: Film Culture as a Feminine Sphere.” In Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema. Ed. Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson. London: Aurora Metro Books, 2015, 257-81.
"Feminist Media Historiography and the Work Ahead," Screening the Past 40 (2015).
"Women and the Silent Screen." In The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film. Ed. Roy Grundmann, Cynthia Lucia and Art Simon. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
EDITORIAL WORK:
Series Editor, Feminist Media Histories Book Series, University of California Press
Darshana Sreedhar Mini, Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India, 2024
Yiman Wang, To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World, 2024
Jennifer Clark, Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women's Liberation, 2023
Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon, eds, Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film, 2023
Diana W. Anselmo, A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood, 2023
Naomi DeCelles, Recollecting Lotte Eisner: Cinema, Exile, and the Archive, 2022
Victoria Ruétalo, Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli's Sexploits, 2022
Annie Berke, Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television, 2022
Founding Editor-in Chief, Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal, University of California Press, 2015-2020
CURATORIAL WORK:
Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, 6-disc box set, Kino-Lorber, 2018
Special Award, New York Film Critics Circle
Best Rediscovery of a Forgotten Film, Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards
Best-Kept Secret, Women Film Critics Circle
Lois Weber, the Wizard (co-curated with Mariann Lewinsky), Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2012
DVD AUDIO COMMENTARIES:
La peur des ombres (1911), Cinema's First Nasty Women, Kino-Lorber, 2022
Sensation Seekers (1927), Kino-Lorber, 2021
Shoes (1916), Milestone, 2018
Traffic in Souls (1913), Perils of the New Land, Flicker Alley, 2008
Where Are My Children? (1916), Treasures from American Film Archives III, National Film Preservation Foundation, 2007
The Blot (1921), Milestone Video, 2003
SELECTED RECENT MEDIA INTERVIEWS:
Dorothy Arzner: Pioneer, Queer, Feminist (dir. Clara Kuperberg and Julia Kuperberg, 2023)
"Everyone, Everywhere All at Once," Throughline, National Public Radio, 2023
Hollywood by the Decade, Feminist Frequency Radio, 2021
Women v. Hollywood Podcast, 2021
Lois Weber (dir. Charlotte Mangin, 2020), American Masters, PBS
"Lois Weber, Hollywood's Forgotten Early Filmmakers, Has 2 Films Restored," NPR Weekend, 2029
Lost LA: Dream Factory (dir. Logan Kibbens, 2018), KCET/PBS
