Linda Williams
Professor, Film Studies and Rhetoric
B.A., University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., University of Colorado
Linda Williams, who received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, is Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric and Director of the Program in Film Studies. A renowned scholar and critic, she is the author of Hard Core; Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible, first published by UC Press in 1989 and reissued in a new edition in 1999. Her most recent book is Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton, 2001). The Committee agreed that "Somehow, without making her technique obvious, she manages to engage every student in an entire class in a rigorous, intellectually challenging discussion, and make it look easy." In their evaluations, time and again students stress Williams' enthusiasm for the subject and her eagerness: "She welcomes being surprised and challenged by her students and her subject," says one former student. Says another, "I've learned an incredible amount about film theory. Professor Williams is amazingly brilliant and it is humbling to be in her class."
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Anyone can watch and enjoy a film. The obvious and easy pleasures of the medium make us all feel like experts. Teaching film and moving-image media is on one level, then, quite easy, especially if, like myself, one teaches popular "body genres" with visceral appeal. But to teach film well is also hard, for one must complicate and question those apparently easy reactions and immerse students in a discipline that can be every bit as difficult and foreign as ancient Greek. The trick is finding the right tension between work and play—between disciplined intellectual inquiry and outright sensual pleasure. At Berkeley I have encountered students who, magically, already know that theoretical, historical and analytic engagement is also the best fun. These students rise to the challenge of thinking clearly and deeply about the obvious experiences they once thought they understood.
If there is any secret to better teaching, for me it has to do with learning, as in the above, how to make the natural tensions of the classroom productive. One day many years ago, when I was still a graduate student instructor, and still a little afraid of my students, I forgot my lecture notes and had to face a class cold. Terrified without the armor of my notes, I connected with that class like no other. I learned that my classes could become more deeply engaged at the precise moment I gave up a degree of intellectual control over them. Yet I also learned that students could only take on that extra liveliness and engagement after they had already been immersed in knowledge and discipline. (If I had lost my notes early in the course, it would not have worked!) The lesson was certainly not to come to all future classes unprepared, but, rather, to be willing to abandon a carefully-crafted lecture to interact with more spontaneous student responses.
Over the years, by trial-and-error, and through the indelible lessons taught by my students, I have learned to sabotage my own tendency to plan everything in advance. For example, I invite students to interrupt my lectures with questions and comments by asking them to write short papers that form the basis of spontaneous oral interventions in class discussion. These are precisely not formal "reports" but spontaneous insertions into ongoing conversations. On any given day, the students who always speak find themselves in conversation with those who may not yet have spoken. Many of these new speakers, having once spoken, continue to be connected to the ongoing discussions of the class. I find that Berkeley students respond eloquently to this challenge. Nothing is more exciting than watching them develop their full range of talents.
