About Annie Berke

I am the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and the author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, January 2022). My work on subjects ranging from women in comedy to contemporary documentary have been published in outlets including Senses of Cinema, Literary Hub, Ms., and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television. In 2016, I earned my PhD in American Studies and Film & Media Studies from Yale University, and from 2016 to 2019, taught Film Studies at Hollins University. As a graduate student and a professor, I organized conference proceedings, served on post-screening panels, and delivered lectures geared to an undergraduate audience.

Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms.

Annie's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Annie:

Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon, "Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film" (U California Press, 2023)

August 2, 2023

Incomplete

Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon
Hosted by Annie Berke
Listen:

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resour…

Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman. "Feminists Reclaim Mentorship" (SUNY Press, 2023)

April 26, 2023

Feminists Reclaim Mentorship

Nancy K. Miller, Tahneer Oksman, and Elizabeth Alsop
Hosted by Annie Berke

Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors ca…

Girish Shambu, "The New Cinephilia" (Caboose, 2022)

March 4, 2023

The New Cinephilia

Girish Shambu
Hosted by Annie Berke

Cinephilia has recently experienced a powerful resurgence, one enabled by new media technologies of the digital revolution. One strong continuity betw…

Madeline Lane-McKinley, "Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times" (Common Notions, 2022)

December 4, 2022

Comedy Against Work

Madeline Lane-McKinley
Hosted by Annie Berke

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing i…

Cinema’s First Nasty Women

October 4, 2022

Cinema’s First Nasty Women

Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
Hosted by Annie Berke

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it …

Grant Wiedenfeld, "Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream" (Oxford UP, 2022)

August 8, 2022

Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream

Grant Wiedenfeld
Hosted by Annie Berke

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seve…

A. S. Hamrah, "The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018" (N+1 Books, 2018)

July 4, 2022

The Earth Dies Streaming

A. S. Hamrah
Hosted by Annie Berke

The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 (N+1 Books, 2018) collects the best of A. S. Hamrah’s film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, …

Daniel Fairfax, "The Red Years of Cahiers Du Cinéma (1968-1973)" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)

June 3, 2022

The Red Years of Cahiers Du Cinéma (1968-1973)

Daniel Fairfax
Hosted by Annie Berke

The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Com…

Nick Marx, "Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television" (Indiana UP, 2019)

March 30, 2022

Sketch Comedy

Nick Marx
Hosted by Annie Berke

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us t…

Dana Stevens, "Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century" (Simon and Schuster, 2022)

March 9, 2022

Camera Man

Dana Stevens
Hosted by Annie Berke

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate’s resid…

Isaac Butler, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

February 1, 2022

The Method

Isaac Butler
Hosted by Annie Berke

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward …

Caetlin Benson-Allott, "The Stuff of Spectatorship: Material Cultures of Film and Television" (U California Press, 2021)

December 6, 2021

The Stuff of Spectatorship

Caetlin Benson-Allott
Hosted by Annie Berke

“Made of light and later sound, the film experience cannot be touched, but that does not mean it is immaterial.” So writes Dr. Caetlin Benson-Allott i…

Genevieve Yue, "Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality" (Fordham UP, 2020)

November 3, 2021

Girl Head

Genevieve Yue
Hosted by Annie Berke

The female form has been a fraught site of filmic meaning – of desire and violence, of sex and death – from the very beginnings of cinema. But how dee…

Christina Lane, "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock" (Chicago Review Press, 2020)

October 7, 2021

Phantom Lady

Christina Lane
Hosted by Annie Berke

A platinum beauty with an ugly secret; a tall, dark, and handsome husband with murder in his eyes; starkly lit interiors that may or may not include t…