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.

'"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."'

 

Contact Information

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

• 'The Revolutionary Mr Scofield in the Global Theatres of the Cold War'Link opens in a new window, Modern Language Review, 120: 1 (Jan. 2025): 17-37.
• 'Sherlock's Home'Link opens in a new window, Times Literary Supplement (25 October 2024).
• 'All smirk and no play', Times Literary Supplement (4 October 2024).
• 'The frog and the princess', Times Literary Supplement (28 June 2024).
• 'Authors and auteurs', Times Literary Supplement (19 January 2024).
• 'Ice-cold femme fatale', Times Literary Supplement (12 January 2024).
• '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).

Undergraduate Teaching (student access via Moodle)

• The Formation of American Culture, 1876-1929 (HI282)
• The Formation of American Culture, 1929-2000 (HI2A8)
• The American West (HI3K8)
• The Historical Film (HI33Y)
• The Invention of the American Indian (HI2G9)

Postgraduate Teaching

• PhD supervision in global film and media, 19th and 20th-century US literature, cultural history and historiography

News and Press:

Wall Street Journal reviews Mary C. McCall Jr.Link opens in a new window

TLS reviews Mary C. McCall Jr.Link opens in a new window

BBC Outlook on Mary C. McCall Jr.Link opens in a new window

Woman's Hour/Radio 4

La Revue de la Cite interview

Jacobin praise for Mary C. McCall Jr.

Publishers WeeklyLink opens in a new window praise for Mary C. McCall Jr: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter

The Observer on Mary C. McCall Jr.Link opens in a new window

'The Avenging Goddess of Screenwriters', Los Angeles Review of Books

2021 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences film scholar
Link opens in a new window

The Hollywood Reporter

LA Times

Americana InterviewLink opens in a new window

Madam President: Writers Guild Foundation Event

The Organization Woman (British Academy)

Children of Giant

Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance