It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of Teresa de Lauretis (1938–2026), an internationally renowned feminist and film theorist whose work reshaped the fields of cinema studies, feminist theory, and queer thought. A pioneering intellectual who coined the term “queer theory,” de Lauretis brought semiotics and psychoanalytic theory into transformative dialogue with cinematic representations of desire, gender, and subjectivity. She died in San Francisco on February 3, 2026, at the age of 87.

Born and educated in Italy, de Lauretis earned her doctorate in modern languages and literatures from Bocconi University in Milan before relocating to the United States in the 1960s. She held positions at the University of Colorado–Boulder and the University of California–Davis before joining the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where her cinema studies course drew hundreds of students and helped mark a pivotal moment in the emergence of film studies as an academic field in the United States. At Milwaukee’s Center for Twentieth Century Studies, she participated in a series of historic conferences that brought British and French film theory into sustained conversation with American scholars. With Stephen Heath, she co-edited The Cinematic Apparatus (1980), a landmark volume that confirmed film theory as one of the most influential intellectual movements of the late twentieth century. During this period, she also served on the editorial board of Ciné-Tracts: A Journal of Film and Cultural Studies, one of the earliest U.S.-based film theory journals. The publication of Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (1984) established her as a formidable and original thinker at the intersection of feminism, semiotics, and cinema.

In 1985, de Lauretis joined the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she remained until her retirement in 2008 as Distinguished Professor Emerita. In 1990, she organized the now-legendary working conference on lesbian and gay sexualities titled “Queer Theory,” a gathering whose name would come to define a field of inquiry that reshaped the humanities in the 1990s and beyond. Essays from the conference appeared in a special issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies in 1991. Across eight books and more than one hundred essays in English and Italian, she addressed cinema, literature, science fiction, opera, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, and feminist and queer theory with rigor and unmistakable stylistic precision. Among her most widely cited works are Technologies of Gender (1987), The Practice of Love (1994), and Freud’s Drives (2008). Her scholarship has been translated into more than fourteen languages and has influenced generations of scholars around the world. In 2010, she received the Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Beyond her extraordinary intellectual contributions, Teresa de Lauretis was a devoted mentor, an exacting reader, and a deeply generous advisor. As Patricia White reflected, “No one commanded language(s) like Teresa.” Her writing changed the trajectory of feminist, semiotic, queer, and psychoanalytic theory, and her mentorship shaped countless students and colleagues who carry her influence forward. She is survived by her son, Paul Loeffler, and is remembered by a global community of friends, collaborators, and scholars whose lives were enriched by her brilliance and care.

SCMS extends its deepest sympathies to her family, friends, students, and colleagues. Teresa de Lauretis’s intellectual legacy and singular voice will continue to resonate across disciplines for generations to come.