Dr Sarah Smyth

Biography

Sarah Louise Smyth is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Essex. Sarah's research focuses on women's representation and authorship in contemporary film and television. She is interested in feminist theory, especially feminist film theory; women's filmmaking and television production; postfeminism; pregnancy and motherhood; genre filmmaking. Sarah completed her PhD in Film at the University of Southampton in 2019. Her thesis examined representations of female subjectivity in contemporary British women's cinema. It was funded by the large AHRC project, Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture. From her thesis, she published the article "Postfeminism, Ambivalence and the Mother in Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011)" in the journal Film Criticism (2020), and the chapter, “‘I do not know that I find myself anywhere’: The British Heritage Film and Spaces of Intersectionality in Amma Asante’s Belle (2013)” in Media Crossroads: Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures (2021), published by Duke University Press. As well as women's filmmaking, Sarah also works on women's television production. She co-edited a special dossier on women's authorship and adaptation in contemporary television for New Review of Film and Television Studies (2024). As part of this special dossier, she published the article "Reese Witherspoon’s Popular Feminism: Adaptation and Authorship in Big Little Lies," which examines the feminist strategies Witherspoon deploys in her television programmes (and the limitations to those strategies). Sarah is also working on a new project on the filmmaker, writer and journalist, Nora Ephron. As part of this project, she has published the chapter "Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009)," in Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries Falling off a Cliff (2023), published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is currently working on a monograph examining Ephron's contribution to women's cinema, ReFocus: The Films of Nora Ephron (forthcoming 2026), which will be part of Edinburgh University Press' series, ReFocus: The American Directors. Sarah is also a member of Women's Film and Television History Network UK/Ireland (WFTHN) Steering Group. Sarah would welcome PhD applications in the following areas: • Women’s filmmaking • Women’s television production • Issues of gender and representation • Feminist film theory • British cinema • Genre cinema • Motherhood and pregnancy

Qualifications

• PhD University of Southampton,

• MA University of Sussex,

• BA University of Southampton,

Appointments

University of Essex

• Lecturer, Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex (1/9/2019 - present)