Shilyh Warren

Ph.D. - Literature
Duke University - 2010

M.A. - Literature
Duke University - 2004

M.A. - Comparative Literature
Dartmouth College - 2002

B.A. - Women's Studies
Dartmouth College - 1996

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Dr. Shilyh Warren's research takes up debates in global film history, feminist theory, documentary studies, and film theory. Her first book, Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary (University of Illinois Press, 2019) examines two key periods in the history of women's documentary filmmaking: the 20s-40s and the 1970s. The book explores the ethnographic strain of documentary in particular and makes the argument that women's nonfictional filmmaking has always struggled with the problems of realism and the politics of race.

Her second book, co-edited with Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi, Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) answers the urgent need to re-evaluate the significance of women's documentary practices, their contributions to feminist world-building, and the state of documentary studies as a whole.

Her current project focuses on the early history of women in psychoanalysis and the feminist politics of sexuality, both on and off screen.  

Her research has also appeared in Signs, Camera Obscura, South Atlantic Quarterly, and Feminist Media Histories, among others.

Warren previously earned a PhD in Literature and a Certificate in Feminist Studies from Duke University as well as an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. She is also a fluent Spanish speaker.

She advises doctoral students on a wide range of projects interested in politics, representation, and moving image media, including, but not limited to: histories of representation, psychoanalysis, critical theory, feminist theory, theories of sex and sexuality, postcolonial studies, and more.