Bio

Linda Williams teaches courses on popular moving-image genres (pornography, melodrama, and "body genres" of all sorts). She has recently taught courses on Oscar Micheaux and Spike Lee, Luis Bunuel, eastern and western melodrama, film theory, and selected "sex genres." Her books include a psychoanalytic study of Surrealist cinema, Figures of Desire (1981), a co-edited volume of feminist film criticism (Re-vision, 1984), an edited volume on film spectatorship, Viewing Positions (1993), the co-edited Reinventing Film Studies (with Christine Gledhill, 2000). She has also edited a collection of essays on pornography, Porn Studies, featuring work by many U.C. Berkeley graduate students (Duke, 2004). In 1989 Williams published a study of pornographic film entitled Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (second edition 1999). More recently she published Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White, from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (2001, Princeton). Her current project is entitled Screening Sex (forthcoming, Duke). It chronicles sex in movies from Edison’s The Kiss to new media.

Areas of Interest

Film history and genre, Melodrama and pornography, Feminist theory, Visual culture, Designated emphasis in women, gender, and sexuality

Selected Publications

Books

Screening Sex (Duke University Press, forthcoming)

Porn Studies (Duke University Press, 2004.

"Playing the Race Card:" Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton University Press, 2001).

Re-inventing Film Studies, Co-edited anthology with Christine Gledhill (London: Edward Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, Edited (Rutgers University Press, 1994).

Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (University of California Press, 1989).
--Published in Britain by Pandora Press, 1990.
--In Germany by Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1995.
--New Edition with new preface and epilogue, U.C. Press, 1999 .

Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (University of Illinois Press, 1981). --Reissued in paperback from University of California Press, 1991.

Selected Book Chapters

"Pornographies On/Scene, or 'Diff'rent Strokes for Diff'rent Folks.'"  In Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the  Pornography Debate. Eds. Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh.  London: Virago, 1999.    

"Second Thoughts on Hard Core: American Obscenity Law  and the Scapegoating of   Deviance." In Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power.  Eds. Pam Church Gibson   and Roma Gibson. British Film Institute, 1993. 46?]61.

"A Provoking Agent: The Pornography and Performance Art of Annie Sprinkle." In Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power.  Eds. Pam Church Gibson and Roma     Gibson. 1993. 46?]61. ?]?]Reprinted in Social Text 37 (Winter 1993): 117?]133; Provoking Agents. Ed.

Judith Gardiner. Urbana: University of  Illinois Press, 1995; and Writing on the

Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory.  Eds., Sheila Conboy,

Nadia Medina, Sarah Stanbury.  Forthcoming, Columbia U.P.

"Corporealized Observers: Visual Pornography and the  'Carnal Density of Vision.'" In  Patrice Petro, ed., Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video. Bloomington, Indiana:  Indiana University Press, 1995.

--“Die visuelle und korperliche Lust der Pornographie in bewegten Bildern: Ein kurzer historischer Uberblick.” Eds. Jorg Huber, Alois Martin Muller.  Stroemfeld/Roter Stern.  Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich, 1996.

“Melodrama Revised.” In Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory. Ed.  Nick Browne. University of California Press, 1998.        

“The Ethics of Documentary Intervention: Dennis O’Rourke’s The Good Woman of Bangkok.” In The Good Woman of Bangkok. Eds, Chris Berry, Laleen Jayamanne and Annette Hamilton. Sydney: Power Institute Press, 1997.

“Discipline and Distraction: “The Care and Handling of Psycho.” In “Culture” and  the Problem of the Disciplines. Ed. John Carlos Rowe. Columbia University Press, 1998. --Reprinted as “Discipline and Fun: Psycho and Postmodern Cinema.” In Re-inventing Film Studies.  Eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams. London: Edward  Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press. 2000.

“Skin Flicks on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation and Interracial Lust.”  Porn Studies. Ed.,Linda Williams.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Pp 271-308.

Selected Journal Articles

"Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess." Film Quarterly Vol. 44:4 (Summer 1991):2?]13 --Reprinted in: Film Genre Reader. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1995; Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Mast, Cohen and Braudy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford University Press, 1998.

 ?]?]Translated to German: "Filmkorper: Geschlecht un Genre," translated by Ewa Hess, in Feminismus und Medien. Ed.G.J. Lischka (Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1991.  249?]278.

"Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History and the New Documentary."  Film Quarterly 46:3 (Spring 1993) 9?]21.

--Reprinted in: Film Quarterly: Forty Years, a Selection. Ed. Brian Henderson and Ann Martin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999; Documenting the Documentary. Ed. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.

--Translated to German: "Spiegel ohne Gedachnis: Wahrheit, Geschichte und der neue     Dokumentarfilm." In Vor der Information Nr 1/2, 1994: Retranslated to German in Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit: Dokumentarfilm, Fernsehen und Geschichte. Edited by Eva Hohenberger, Judith Keilbah. Berlin: Verlag Vorwerk, 2003.

“Showgirls and Sex Acts.” Contribution to Round Table on Showgirls. Film Quarterly  56:3 (Spring 2003): 32-

 “Cinema and the Sex Act.” Cineaste Vol. XXVII no. 1 (Winter 2001): 20-25.

“Melancholy Melodrama: Almodovarian Grief and Lost Homosexual Attachments.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies Vol. 5 no.3 (October 2004): 273-286.

--reprinted and expanded in All About Almodóvar. Despina Kakoudaki and Brad Epps eds. Forthcoming University of Minnesotta Press 2007.

“‘White Slavery’or the Ethnography of ‘Sexworkers’: Women in Stag Films at the Kinsey Archive.”  The Moving Image (Fall 2005).                 

“Of Kisses and Ellipses: the Long Adolescence of American Film.” Critical Inquiry Vol. 32 No.2 (Winter 2006):288-340.