She is currently chair of the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media (FTVDM) and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
[1][2] Her notable works include Lesbian Rule: Cultural Criticism and the Value of Desire (Duke University Press, 2003), which won the Katherine Singer Kovács Prize from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
[2][4] Villarejo began her academic career in 1997 at Cornell University, where she served as the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Humanities.
[5] In 2020, she joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as chair of the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media and professor.
[9] Villarejo serves on the editorial boards of Film Quarterly and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS).