Mila Zuo is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC. She is interested in transnational Asian cinemas, film-philosophy, abject and enchanted epistemologies, star studies, digital and new media, and critical theories of gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity.
Her book Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke University Press, 2022) focuses on the affective racialization of Chinese women film stars, demonstrating the ways which vulgar, flavourful beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. Vulgar Beauty is the 2024 book winner in media, performance, and visual studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. Accompanying research can be found in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Celebrity Studies, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Feminist Media Histories, and in various anthologies. In addition to her scholarly work, Zuo writes, directs, and produces narrative films, visual essays, documentaries, and music videos. Her short films have screened in international film festivals and universities, including Carnal Orient (2016) which premiered at Slamdance Film Festival, and her short narrative film Kin (2021), which was the recipient of the 2019 Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, and screened at HollyShorts Film Festival. Her current film project, Mongoloids, was awarded an Insight Development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
