Carlos Valladares receives 2018 Deans Award

Carlos Valladares, a double major in American Studies and Film Studies, was one of only nine Stanford students to win the 2018 Deans Award for Academic Achievement. As the call for nominations put it, award recognizes more than just high GPAs or success in coursework: “The Deans’ Award honors students for exceptional, tangible accomplishments in independent research, national academic competitions, a presentation or publication for a regional or national audience, or superior performance in the creative arts.”  Here is the citation the VPUE posted in announcing the awards , recognizing the accomplishments that earned Valladares this rare honor:

 “[Valladares] writes regularly for the San Francisco Chronicle as a film and jazz critic, after working there in the summer of 2017 as a Rebele Internship-funded staff writer. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of “Untitled,” Stanford’s undergraduate art history and film studies journal. In his junior year, and with the support of Professor Alexander Nemerov and Jason Linetzky, he curated and wrote the wall-texts for “Abstraction and the Movies,” an exhibition at the Anderson Collection which paired up films with paintings by Abstract Expressionist artists; slated to run for only 3 weeks, it ran for 3 months. Alexander Nemerov calls Carlos, a “one-of-a-kind student” who is “the most natural young scholar of film [he has] ever encountered in 25 years of undergraduate teaching at Yale and at Stanford.” Drawing upon research funded by the Chappell-Lougee Scholarship, he is writing an honors thesis on acting and ensembles in the films of Richard Lester ("A Hard Day’s Night," "Help!"). He is a research assistant for Dr. Christina Mesa on her upcoming book on black and white race relations in popular American fiction and film. As the Managing Editor of Arts and Life for the Stanford Daily, he writes a regular column on film (especially those playing at the Stanford Theatre) and has interviewed directors such as Kelly Reichardt, Steven Spielberg, Whit Stillman, and Terence Davies. In addition to his outstanding achievements, Professors Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Scott Bukatman, and Marci Kwon, along with Lecturers Judith Richardson and Elizabeth Kessler, commend Carlos for his ‘rare gift of being able to extend his astute insights into film beyond the classroom to his fellow students and the broader public.’”