Elena Creef

Elena Creef is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College, specializing in Asian American women's and gender studies. She joined Wellesley in 1993 after completing her PhD at UC Santa Cruz and has developed interdisciplinary courses spanning topics like Japanese American internment, Asian women in film, techno-orientalism, and feminist Animal Studies. Her research explores visual archives and cultural representations through historical and contemporary lenses.

• B.A., University of California-Riverside
• M.A., University of California-Santa Barbara
• Ph.D., University of California-Santa Cruz

Her research focuses on the gendered legacy of Asian American experiences, including wartime internment, photographic archives, and the role of horses in Native American cultural healing. She is currently documenting memorial Lakota and Dakota horse rides in her project "36 Views of a Horse Nation."

Professor Creef teaches courses such as Asian/American Women in Film, Techno-Orientalism, and "Humans and Horses," integrating critical frameworks from feminist studies, film theory, and postcolonial studies.