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Linda Williams is a professor of film studies in the departments of Film Studies and Rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley.
Williams graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a B.A in Comparative Literature in 1969, and then gained a PhD at the University of Colorado for her dissertation subsequently published as Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film. Her main academic areas of interest are; film history, film genre, melodrama, pornography, feminist theory and visual culture; all with an emphasis on women, gender, race, and sexuality.
With respect to film genres, she argues that horror, melodrama, and pornography all fall into the category of "body genres", since they are each designed to elicit physical reactions on the part of viewers. Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling, white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror; melodramas are designed to elicit sympathy; and pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal.
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