[2] Her special interests include sexuality and censorship in cinema and literature (she has written widely on pornography, including a book on soft-core cinema), women in film, psychoanalytic theory and D. H. Lawrence.
Williams went to school in Bristol, where she grew up, and followed her English degree at the University of Sussex with an MA in Critical Theory.
She earned her PhD from Sussex on Lawrence, Nietzsche, Freud and Feminism.
[2] She has written several books, including the influential Critical Desire: Psychoanalysis and the Literary Subject and The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema, and is a regular contributor to the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine, and to radio programmes including Woman's Hour.
[3] Her 2006 book, Contemporary American Cinema was co-edited with fellow Southampton lecturer Michael Hammond.