Linda Williams, Professor of Film & Media and Rhetoric
December 18, 1946 – March 12, 2025
The faculty, students, staff, and alumni of the Department and Film & Media mourn the passing of our brilliant colleague, mentor, and friend, Linda Williams.
Williams was a groundbreaking film scholar whose research helped establish and shape the fields of feminist film theory, pornography studies, documentary studies, and melodrama studies. Williams graduated with a B.A. from UC Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Literature in 1969 and went on to earn her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Before her appointment as a Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and the Film Studies Program (now the Department of Film & Media) in 1997, Williams taught at the University of Illinois, Chicago (1977-1989) and the University of California, Irvine (1989 – 1997). She authored fivebooks—Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (1992), Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (1989), Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (2002), Screening Sex (2008), and On the Wire (2014), along with several edited volumes and numerous articles on horror, body genres, melodrama, documentary, spectatorship, and surrealist film. Williams researched and partially wrote her most recent book project, Melodrama as Provocateur, while she was on fellowship at the Institut D’Études Advancées de Paris (2019-2020). Edited by Christine Gledhill, Laura Horak, and Elisabeth Anker, this work-in-progress will be published by Duke University Press as a volume that includes essay responses by scholars in the field. Williams’ innovative and influential contributions to her fields were recognized with several prestigious awards from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, including The Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Prize (1989, 2012) and the Distinguished Career Award (2013; see her acceptance speech below). Linda Williams was a remarkably talented, dedicated, and generous instructor and mentor, and she supervised or served on the committees of an almost impossible number of PhD dissertations, influencing a generation of future film and media scholars. Williams was the heart of our department for many years, and she and her husband, Paul Fitzgerald, generously opened their home to faculty, students, and alum, fostering a dynamic intellectual community that was singular in its commitment to collegiality, curiosity, and the sheer pleasure of rigorous, scholarly engagement with moving image culture. Her brilliant pedagogy at UC Berkeley was recognized with the campus’ highest honors: the Distinguished Teaching Award (2004) and the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award (2014). Williams loved Berkeley, and when she was not lecturing in Dwinelle Hall, she could often be found at the Pacific Film Archive or at Golden Bear Pool or riding her bicycle down (and up) Bancroft Avenue. She was the glue that held us together for so many years, and we will remember her—and miss her terribly—every day.
Dearest Linda, you got the words right.
Linda Williams’ acceptance speech, SCMS Distinguished Career Award (2013)