Linda Williams papers (Ms.2015.011)

Biographical / Historical

Linda Williams, Professor Emerita in Film & Media and Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. Her academic interests center on film studies, feminist theory, and "body genres," genres designed to elicit a specific physical reaction. These include pornography, melodrama, and horror. Other areas of focus in both research and teachings include "race" films, Oscar Micheaux, Spike Lee, Surrealist cinema, David Lynch, Pedro Almodóvar, Luis Buñuel, film theory, musicals, and the HBO series "The Wire."

Williams earned her PhD at the University of Colorado in 1977. She taught at The University of Illinois from 1977 to 1989, first as an Assistant Professor of English, and then in 1984 as an Associate Professor of English. Her first position as a Professor of Film Studies was at The University of California, Irvine from 1989 to 1997. She has worked at the University of California, Berkeley since 1997 and was their Director of Program in Film Studies until her retirement in 2015.

In 1989, Williams published her groundbreaking study of pornographic film entitled, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (second edition 1999). This pioneering text on moving-image pornography took a serious look at the history and form of this most prevalent of genres. Other books include a psychoanalytic study of surrealist cinema (Figures of Desire, 1981), a co-edited volume of feminist film criticism (Re-vision, 1984), Viewing Positions (1993), Screening Sex (2008), Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White, From Uncle Tom to OJ Simpson (2001), and On the Wire (2014), a study of the HBO television series. She has also edited a collection of essays on pornography called Porn Studies (Duke, 2004).

She received Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004 and in 2011 was appointed Faculty Research Lecturer. In 2013, Williams received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

In May, 2020, Williams experienced a severe stroke, leaving her paralyzed on the left side and mostly blind. Though this experience significantly affected her personal and professional life, Williams has continued her award-winning research.

In 2022, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies honored her with the Outstanding Achievement Award. Though she could not attend the virtual event live, she was interviewed and it was shown at the awards.

In December 2023, on the 10th Anniversary of the British journal Porn Studies, Berkeley faculty organized a symposium in her honor with speakers honoring her work in the field. The talks will be published in the Summer 2024 issue of Porn Studies.

In addition to professional honors, Duke University Press will be publishing an unfinished manuscript of Williams based on her research comparing the history of the origin of French and American film. In it, Williams argues the melodramatic mode in both France and the USA should be emphasized more than the "classical." Approximately fifteen scholars in the field have replied to her manuscript, which will be published in 2024-2025 with the title, Melodrama as Provocateur.

Linda Williams continues to reside in California with her husband, Paul Fitzgerald.

Biographical note modified from: http://filmmedia.berkeley.edu/faculty-profile/linda-williams