Professor J E Smyth
Biography
J. E. Smyth is a historian and film critic
B.A. Wellesley College, 1999
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Yale University, 2000-2005
Contact Information
for press and other media enquiries, see https://nobodysgirlfriday.com/get-in-touch/
email: j.e.smyth@warwick.ac.uk
Undergraduate Teaching
- The Formation of American Culture, 1876-1929 (HI282)
- The Formation of American Culture, 1929-2000 (HI2A8)
- The American West (HI3K8)
- The Historical Film (HI33Y)
- Student office hours in term 3: by appointment
Postgraduate Teaching
- PhD supervision in film and media, 19th and 20th-century US literature, cultural history and historiography
Books
- Mary C. McCall Jr.: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024).
- I Lost My Girlish Laughter, by Jane Allen, ed. and with introduction (New York: Penguin/Random House, 2019).
- Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Theatre Library Association Richard Wall Special Jury Prize; Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Media and Cultural Studies finalist.
- From Here to Eternity (London: British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
- Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014). Theatre Library Association Richard Wall Memorial Award finalist.
- Hollywood and the American Historical Film, ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
- Edna Ferber's Hollywood: American Fictions of Gender, Race, and History, preface by Thomas Schatz (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009). Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Media and Cultural Studies.
- Reconstructing American Historical Cinema From 'Cimarron' to 'Citizen Kane' (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006; 2009). International Association of Media Historians' Prize in Media and History; Theatre Library Association Richard Wall Memorial Award finalist.
Selected recent articles, reviews and video essays since 2017
- 'Lost Lady/The Lady Vanishes: A Historian's Whodunnit', Cineaste (summer 2023), 34-39.
- 'Im Westen Nichts Neues', Cineaste (spring 2023), 51-53.
- 'The Unmaking of the English Working-Class Actor', Cineaste (fall 2022), 4-9.
- 'The Avenging Goddess of Screenwriters', Los Angeles Review of Books (18 November 2022).
- 'L'Evenement', Cineaste (fall 2022), 43-45.
- 'The Heresy of Truth: An Interview with Paul Verhoeven', Cineaste (winter 2021), 34-7.
- 'Benedetta', Сineaste (winter 2021), 42-43.
- 'The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: The Dark History Behind The Maltese Falcon', Cineaste (fall 2021), 4-9.
- 'Gunda', Cineaste (fall 2021), 44-46.
- 'Barbara McLean', for The Gunfighter, The Criterion Collection (2020).
- 'Harriet Parsons', American National Biography (2020).
- 'Outgrowing Little Women', Cineaste (spring 2020), 8-13.
- 'Ida Lupino's America: Just a Big Family of Little Failures', Cineaste (winter 2020), 12-15, 78.
- 'The Heiress', Cineaste (fall 2019), 54-56.
- 'Kay Brown', American National Biography (2019).
- 'Mary C. McCall Jr.', American National Biography (2018).
- 'Babylon Revisited', Cineaste (spring 2018), 4-9.
- 'The Anatomy of the Prick Flick', Cineaste (fall 2017), 20-24.
- 'The First Woman President of the Screen Writers Guild', Written By (September-October 2017), 38-42, 63.
- 'Marsha Hunt: American Girl, Un-American Woman', Sight & Sound (17 October 2017).
- 'Barbara McLean: Editing, Authorship and the Equal Right to Be the Best', Cineaste (spring 2017), 20-23.
- 'When a Woman Called the Shots at the Screen Writers Guild', womenandhollywood.com (14 March 2017).
"'What in heaven’s name brought you to England?'
'My health. I came to England for the waters.'
'Waters-- what waters? We're in the middle of the Midlands.'
'I was misinformed.'"
News and Press
The Avenging Goddess of ScreenwritersLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Los Angeles Review of Books
Americana InterviewLink opens in a new window
Madam President: Writers Guild Foundation Event March 16
The Organization Woman (British Academy)
Children of Giant (2015)Link opens in a new window
Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance, Getty Center, April 2012.Link opens in a new window