Rosanne Welch

From Anita to Amy: Women Write the Repartee we Remember

Stephens College, USA

From the Call for Papers this presentation serves as a response to the central theme for SRN 2024 “A Conversation Beyond Script,” encouraging a broad exploration of dialogues and communication within the world of screenwriting and beyond. While we emphasize the role of dialogues in scripts and films, we also invite you to interpret this theme metaphorically, considering filmmakers’ discussions in the crews, intercultural dialogue, and other related topics.

This presentation particularly touches on:

• Plurality of voices and polylogues
• Collaborative conversations in filmmaking
• Intercultural dialogue in film and television

As I compare the repartee written by female screenwriters to the repartee written by male screenwriters I find that male screenwriters fall back on demeaning jokes more often than women who tend to treat the male/female speakers more like equals. The presentation will highlight dialogue in these (and other) U.S. films and television shows.

Female Written:
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Dinner at 8
The Thin Man (and sequels)
Adam’s Rib
Pat and Mike
When Harry Met Sally
Mean Girls
30 Rock
The Golden Girls
The Gilmore Girls

Male Written:
Casablanca
Maltese Falcon
The Front Page
Double Indemnity

Rosanne Welch, Phd, is current Chair of the Executive Council of the SRN and deeply enjoyed hosting many of our members at SRN 2023 in Columbia, Missouri on the campus of Stephens College where she serves as Executive Director of their MFA in TV and Screenwriting and teaches the History of Screenwriting. Her television credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She edited When Women Wrote Hollywood (2018), runner up for the Koppelman Award; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia (2018 Outstanding References Sources List and Best Historical Materials List, by the ALA); and wrote Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Popular Culture (2016). In 2022 she co-wrote American Women’s History of Film. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting, on the Editorial Board for California Journal.

Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” from the TEDxCPP

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