Kimberly J. Lau


Kimberly J. Lau is an American academic whose expertise lies in fairy tale studies, feminist theory and gender studies, critical race theory, monster studies, and popular culture. She is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
WWW kimberlyjlau.com

Education

Kimberly Lau attended the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a B.A. in Rhetoric in 1990 and an M.L.I.S. in Library and Information Science in 1993. In 1998, Lau completed her Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife at University of Pennsylvania.

Career

Lau was Assistant Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Utah from 1998 to 2005. She is a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she began as an Associate Professor of American Studies in 2006. While at UC Santa Cruz, Lau was Provost of Oakes College from 2008 to 2014, and in 2024, she was appointed Provost of College Nine and John R. Lewis College.
In December 2024, Lau published Specters of the Marvelous: Race and Development of the European Fairy Tale through Wayne State University Press. The book "traces the historical and cultural notions of race among canonical fairy tale collections from four European countries, analyzing Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Children and Household Tales, and Andrew and Nora Lang's Colored Fairy Books."

Awards and honors

Works

Selected authored books

Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter's the Bloody Chamber
  • ''Specters of the Marvelous: Race and Development of the European Fairy Tale''

Selected edited books

  • ''What Goes Around Comes Around: The Circulation of Proverbs in Contemporary Life''

Selected articles and book chapters