Linda Williams (born December 18, 1946) is an American professor of

film studies Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies. ...

in the departments of Film Studies and Rhetoric at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Career

Williams graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a B.A in

Comparative Literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

in 1969, and then earned a PhD at the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University o ...

for her dissertation subsequently published as ''Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film''. Her main academic areas of interest are:

film history The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art, visual art form created using history of film technology, film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. ...

film genre A film genre is a stylistic or thematic category for motion pictures based on similarities either in the narrative elements, aesthetic approach, or the emotional response to the film. Drawing heavily from the theories of literary-genre cri ...

, melodrama, pornography,

feminist theory Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and femin ...

and

visual culture Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images. Many academic fields study this subject, including cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, Deaf Studies, and anthropology. The field of vi ...

; all with an emphasis on women,

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

, race, and sexuality. With respect to film genres, she argues that horror, melodrama, and pornography all fall into the category of "body genres", since they are each designed to elicit physical reactions on the part of viewers. Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling, white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror (often through images of blood); melodramas are designed to elicit sympathy (often through images of tears); and pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal (often through images of "money shots"). Williams believes that much pornographic expression, and the form that expression takes, is due to the distance between the audience and the actual performers, and so, she concludes, much of what pornography becomes is a type of compensation for the distance between viewer and viewed.

Professional experience

*Assistant Professor of English, University of Illinois, Chicago. 1977-83 *Associate Professor of English, University of Illinois, Chicago. 1984-89 *Professor, Film Studies, University of California, Irvine. 1989-97 :Acting Director, Winter 1993 :Director, Summer 1994 and Spring 1996 *Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley. 1997–Present :Director of Program in Film Studies, July 1999-Present

Selected honors and awards

*1989

Katherine Singer Kovács Katherine Singer Kovács (1946-1989) was an American film studies academicGottesman, Ron. ''Homage to Kitty Singer Kovacs.'' Cinema Journal 30, no. 3 (1991): 3–5. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1224926.''In memory of Katherine Singer Kovacs (1946� ...

Prize in Film, TV, and Video Studies for essay ''Fetishism and the Visual Pleasure of Hard Core: Marx, Freud and the 'Money Shot; and finalist for the best book in Cinema Studies: both the Jay Leyda Prize and the Kovacks Prize (for ''Hard Core'') *2004 Distinguished Teaching Award, UC Berkeley *2004-2005 Humanities Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley *2011 Faculties Research Lecture, UC Berkeley *2012

Prize for "'Cluster Fuck': The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris' ''Standard Operating Procedure''." *2013 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Career Achievement Award *Class of 1940, Second Chair: UC Berkeley.

Writings

Author

*''Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film'', University of Illinois Press, 1981. Paperback edition: University of California Press, 1992, *''Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible'' (University of California Press, 1989). Expanded Paperback Edition: University of California Press, 1999, *''Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black & White from Uncle Tom to O.J.Simpson'', Princeton University Press, Paperback edition, 2002, *''Screening Sex'', Duke University Press, 2008, *''On The Wire'', Duke University Press, 2014,

Editor

*''Revision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism''. Coedited with Mary Anne Doane and Patricia Mellencamp, American Film Institute Monograph Series Frederick Maryland: University Publications of America, 1984. *''Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film''. Edited. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. *''Reinventing Film Studies''. Co-edited anthology with Christine Gledhill. London: Edward Arnold. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. *''Porn Studies''. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

Journal articles

* Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess." ''Film Quarterly'' 44, no. 4 (1991): 2-13. doi:10.2307/1212758. * * *

References

External links

Linda Williams's faculty page

Linda Williams Papers
- Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University {{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Linda (Film Critic) 1946 births University of California, Berkeley faculty Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area American film critics American women film critics American film historians American women historians Historians from California 21st-century American women