Rate My Professor Laura Ceia

Dr. Laura Ceia is an Associate Professor of French and Global Studies and the current Chair of the Department of Global Studies at California State University, Long Beach. She holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from the University of California, Davis, a Maîtrise in French and Romanian Literature from the University of Timisoara in Romania, served as an ancienne pensionnaire at the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) in Paris, and graduated from the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. Trained as a comparatist, her academic interests center on literature and cinema, particularly post-war and postcolonial French and Francophone cinema, turn-of-the-twentieth-century French literature alongside the history of ideas, Eastern European literature and cinema, and contemporary transnational European cinemas. Ceia examines the intersection of politics and aesthetics, focusing on the role of cultural artifacts—such as literature and film—in shaping, reshaping, or distorting cultural perceptions of citizenship, nationality, and identity. She is currently developing a book-length project on the memory of communism in Romania, approached through a feminist lens.

In her teaching career, Ceia previously offered courses in French and Film Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University before joining CSULB. There, she instructs a diverse array of courses in global studies and related fields, including I/ST 300: Global Visual Cultures—The Power of Images in the Digital Age; I/ST 200: Introduction to International Studies; I/ST 100: Global Citizenship; I/ST 490: Senior Seminar; I/ST 491: Intercultural Comprehension; FREN/FEA 456: French Cinema; RGR 346: European Cinema of Fascism, Communism, and Resistance; and RGR 315: Contemporary Europe. Among her scholarly contributions is the peer-reviewed article titled “White women in racialised spaces, or Claire Denis’s double vision of ‘Africa’,” published in 2023. Ceia's expertise bridges literature, film, and global studies, enriching the academic discourse in these interconnected disciplines.