Professor Linda Ruth Williams

English
School of Humanities
Avenue Campus
University of Southampton
SOUTHAMPTON
SO17 1BJ

Position: Professor

Location: 65/2037
Extension: 22177
Telephone: (023) 8059 2177
Fax: (023) 8059 2859
Email Professor Linda Ruth Williams

Research interests

I teach and research on film, and am interested in all aspects of classical Hollywood and post-classical American cinema. I have research interests in popular genre cinema, censorship, stardom, gender and sexuality (see 'Publications' below for full details). I have supervised or am currently supervising PhD projects on areas as diverse as contemporary science fiction; neo-noir; the body in reality TV; vampire film and fiction; paintings and gender in 1940s Hollywood; cinematic time; music in recent US independent cinema; self-endangerment in contemporary film and fiction; children’s cinema. Whilst I and Dr Mike Hammond are based in the English Department, both of us have strong links with staff in the film discipline, and contribute to teaching the Film Studies BA and MA courses, as well as to the wider research life of film in the School. I would welcome research proposals in any area of US or British cinema, particularly in the period since 1960, and would be happy to respond informally to ideas you might have about potential PhD projects before you submit a formal application.

Research projects

I am currently working on two major projects, on the British director Ken Russell, and on children and childhood in Steven Spielberg’s films. I am also developing projects on the 1970s US director Hal Ashby, and on contemporary female stardom. I have an article forthcoming in a collection of essays on neo-noir cinema, entitled ‘A Woman Scorned: The Neo-Noir Erotic Thriller as Revenge Drama’.

Publications

Books

(ed., with Mike Hammond) Contemporary American Cinema (London: Open University Press, 2006)

The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005)

D.H.Lawrence, ‘Writers and their Work’ series (London: Northcote House/The British Council, 1997)

Critical Desire: Psychoanalysis and the literary subject (London: Edward Arnold, 1995)

(ed. and introd.) Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence (London: Everyman Paperbacks, 1993)

Sex in the Head: Visions of Femininity and Film in D.H.Lawrence, (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)

(ed.) The Twentieth Century: From 1900 to the Present Day (Bloomsbury Guides to Literature), Bloomsbury Press, 1992), rpt. 1994.

(ed., with Helen Wilcox, Keith McWatters, Ann Thompson) The Body and the Text: Hélène Cixous, Reading and Teaching (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990).

Articles

‘Speaking of Softcore’, in Cinema Journal, 47, 2, 2008, pp.129-135

‘Exploitation Cinema’ in The Cinema Book, third edition, edited by Pam Cook, London: British Film Institute, 2007, pp. 298-301

‘Twin Peaks: David Lynch and the serial-thriller soap’, in The Contemporary Television Series, edited by Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp.37-56

‘Ready for Action: G.I. Jane, Demi Moore’s Body and the Female Combat Movie’, in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker (London: Routledge, 2004), pp.169-85

‘Swing high, swing low’ in Sight and Sound (March 2003), pp.32-3

‘Escape artist’ in Sight and Sound (October 2002), pp. 22-5

‘Sex and Censoriousness: Pornography and Censorship in Britain’ [1997], extended and updated, in The Media: An Introduction, second edition, ed. Adam Briggs and Paul Cobley (Pearson Education, 2002), pp. 477-495

‘Blood Sisters’ in Sight and Sound, 11.6 (June 2001), pp. 36-7

‘Body Talk’ in Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, ed. José Arroyo (London: BFI Publishing, 2000), pp. 44-50

‘The Edge of the Razor’ (interview with director Catherine Breillat), in Sight and Sound, 9. 10 (October 1999), 13-14

‘The Inside-Out of Masculinity: David Cronenberg’s Visceral Pleasures’, in
The Body’s Perilous Pleasures: Dangerous Desire and Contemporary Culture, ed. Michele Aaron (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 30-48

‘Dream Girls and Mechanic Panic: Dystopia and its others in Brazil and Nineteen Eighty-Four’, in Unearthly Strangers: The British Science Fiction Film, ed. I.Q. Hunter (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 153-168, also reprinted in the 2004 anthology Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader, ed Sean Redmond (Columbia University Press/Wallflower Press, 2004), pp. 64-73

‘We’ve Been Forgetting that We’re Flesh and Blood, Mother: Glad Ghosts and Uncanny Bodies’, in D.H.Lawrence Review, 27. 22-3 (1997/8), special edition on ‘D.H.Lawrence and the Psychoanalytic’, ed. Howard J. Booth, Elizabeth M. Fox and Fiona Becket, pp. 233-253

‘Fiona Banner’ in 'Sex and Censoriousness: Pornography and Censorship in Britain’, in The Media Reader, ed. Adam Briggs and Paul Cobley (Addison Wesley Longman, 1997) pp.426-43

Spellbound: Art and Film, ed. Philip Dodd with Ian Christie (London: BFI and Hayward Gallery, 1996), pp. 52-9

‘Identity Orgies’ in New Formations, 25 (Summer 1995), pp. 123-27

'The Pornographic Subject: Feminism and Censorship in the 1990s', in Political Gender, edited by Sally Ledger, Josephine McDonagh and Jane Spencer (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), pp. 189-203

'Everything in question: women and film in prospect', pp. xxiv-xxix; 'Sisters under the skin: video and blockbuster erotic thrillers', pp. 105-114; 'Select Bibliography', pp. 254-264; all in Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader, edited by Pam Cook and Philip Dodd (Scarlet Press, 1993)

'Happy Families? Feminist Transmission and Matrilineal Thought', in New Feminist Discourses, edited by Isobel Armstrong (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 48-64

'The Trial of D.H.Lawrence' in Critical Survey (July 1992), pp. 154-61

'Critical Warfare and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer', in Feminist
Criticism: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Sellers (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 23-43

'Men in Feminism' in Women: A Cultural Review, 1 (July 1990), pp. 63-5

'Submission and reading: Feminine Masochism and Feminist Criticism', in New Formations, 7 (Spring 1989), pp. 9-19

'Behind the Silken-Folded Mask: Victorian and Modern Poetry', in The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, edited by Marion Wynne Davis (London: Bloomsbury Press, 1989), pp. 253-291. I also wrote numerous reference entries on British Poetry since 1830 for that text.

Biographical notes

I am a Professor in Film Studies in the English Department, teaching film to both English students and combined honours film undergraduates. Most of my teaching work is on classical Hollywood and post-classical American cinema, which is sometimes co-taught with the other Film lecturer in the Department, Mike Hammond, and with film colleagues from elsewhere in the school. I also teach Film M.A. students and supervise a number of PhD theses.

Before I came to Southampton in 1994 I taught in the English Department at Liverpool University for five years, and before that I had temporary lecturing jobs at Manchester and Exeter Universities. My first degree was in English at Sussex University; I followed this with an M.A. in Critical Theory from Sussex, and then a PhD on Lawrence, Nietzsche, Freud and feminism, also at Sussex. I have written four books (see above), most recently the first book on the erotic thriller genre, as well as books on D.H. Lawrence and visual culture, on psychoanalytic critical and cultural theory, and a second book on Lawrence in the British Council ‘Writers and their Work’ series.

The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh University Press/Indiana University Press 2005), examines a new genre which appeared in the 1980s and 90s in the context of shifts in the culture of sexuality and the rise of video and dvd. It traces the erotic thriller’s exploitation of pornography and noir, discusses mainstream stars (such as Michael Douglas or Sharon Stone) alongside genre-branded direct-to-video stars, charts the work of key producers and directors, and reads home viewing as a distinct form of spectatorial pleasure. It also includes original interviews I conducted with key genre players including Paul Verhoeven, William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, Gregory Dark, Katt Shea and Jag Mundhra.

Contemporary American Cinema, a large collection of original essays by international film scholars charting the history of all forms of US cinema since 1960, co-edited by myself and Michael Hammond, was published by McGraw-Hill/Open University Press in May 2006.

I am interested in all aspects of contemporary British and American film, and have published on horror cinema, women in film, the relationship between film and contemporary art, and censorship, as well as on other literary areas including Victorian poetry, modern fiction and feminist theory. In October-November 2004 I curated, with Mark Kermode, a major History of the Horror Film at the National Film Theatre in London. In May 2006 I had a prosthetic sculpture made of my neck, to feature in a surreal horror film as part of an artwork on horror and culture constructed by New York artist Christian Jankowski (the prosthetic was used in the film’s most gruesome scenes, and was later be exhibited alongside the film). I regularly write articles and reviews for the BFI journal, Sight and Sound, have also written for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, and contribute to TV and radio programmes on film issues whenever I can.

Teaching responsibilities for Professor Linda Ruth Williams
Module title	Module code	Discipline	Role
American Cinema Since 1965	FILM3006	Film,Cinematics & Photography	Course leader
Fantasy Film and Fiction	ENGL3015	English Studies	Course leader
Dissertation	ENGL3016	English Studies	Tutor

Publications from e–Prints Soton

	Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) (2006) Contemporary American Cinema, London, UK; U.S.A. and Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 584pp.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Auterism and Auteurs. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; U.S.A. and Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 139-144.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Jane Fonda. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; USA; Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 161-163.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Neo-Noir and Erotic Thrillers. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; U.S.A. and Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 358-362.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Warren Beatty. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; U.S.A. and Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 97-99.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) The Graduate. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; USA; Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 101-103.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Jodie Foster. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; USA; Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 412-413.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Sigourney Weaver. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; USA; Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 308-310.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Taxi Driver. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; U.S.A. and Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 157-160.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2006) Toy Story. In, Williams, Linda Ruth and Hammond, Michael (eds.) Contemporary American Cinema. London, UK; USA; Canada, Open University Press; McGraw-Hill, 369-372.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2005) The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema, Edinburgh, Scotland, Edinburgh University Press, 480pp.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2005) Twin Peaks: David Lynch and the serial-thriller soap. In, Hammond, Michael and Mazdon, Lucy (eds.) The Contemporary Television Series. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 37-56.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2004) Ready for action: G.I.Jane, Demi Moore’s body and the female combat movie. In, Tasker, Yvonne (ed.) The Action and Adventure Cinema. London, Routledge, 169-185.
	Williams, Linda Ruth (2002) Sex and censoriousness: pornography and censorship in Britain. In, Briggs, Adam and Cobley, Paul (eds.) The Media: An Introduction. Harlow, Pearson Longman, 477-495.