Dr. Rosanne Welch – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

“Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women” Panel at the Writers Guild Foundation – Friday, August 8, 2025, 7pm

Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women

During every MFA Residency Workshop I moderate a panel of writers – often proudly including one of our MFA alums – and this August we’re doing it again. Join us on Friday, August 8, 2025 from 7:00 PM 8:30 PM at the Writers Guild Foundation (7000 West 3rd Street Los Angeles, CA, 90048) for:

Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women

We’ll explore how writers develop these strong characters, how to approach sensitive scenes intentionally, and how they navigate nuances of character personalities, behaviors, and motivations.

Panelists include:

Karen Joseph Adcock – Yellowjackets
Beth Appel – The Sex Lives of College Girls
Sahar Jahani – Life and Beth (MFA alum!)
Autumn Joy Jimerson – Forever
Dr. Rosanne Welch – Moderator/Executive Director, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Get tickts for this WGA Panel Discussion

And if you’d like to see some of our previous WGA panels you can find them on our MFA Website

Rosanne Talks “Why The Monkees Matter” on “Johnny D’s Rock n Roll PhD” Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire video – Johnny D’s Rock n Roll PhD – Author Rosanne Welch “Why The Monkees Matter”

Get the book, Why The Monkees Matter , from Amazon, Bookshop.org, or McFarland

I had a great conversation about Why The Monkees Matter with the two hosts of “Johnny D’s Rock n Roll PhD”. Often, I speak with people who know the music more than the show – or the show more than the music. Here, both hosts had strong knowledge about both, and then we found out he shared the same top 1 songs as our favs.

Watch the video to learn about the many things the TV show taught us about friendship, going against authority and the patriarchy, and living a life full of passion for art above all things commerce – with lots of hidden nods toward the counter culture of the day (like rescuing a giant marijuana plant from misuse by supervillains who would corrupt its powerful fumes for evil). Yeah, they did a whole show about that!

A complete transcript is available here or on the YouTube Page

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Daughter, Wife, Widow, Screenwriter: The Heroines’ Journey of Dorothy Davenport – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, June 2025

Read Daughter, Wife, Widow, Screenwriter: The Heroines’ Journey of Dorothy Davenport

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Lois Weber: More than a Writer-Director She’s the Auteur Activist of Early Cinema – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, April 2025

Read Lois Weber: More than a Writer-Director She’s the Auteur Activist of Early Cinema

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Her Career Outlasted the Hays Code: Kathryn Scola – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, March 2025

Read Her Career Outlasted the Hays Code: Kathryn Scola

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Friend and editor Anna Weinstein’s book on Shonda Rhimes make Bloomsbury’s Essential New Books list for film students

Congratulations to my friend and editor Anna Weinstein!

The first book in her “Screen Storytellers” series, which is on The Works of Shonda Rhimes is on Bloomsbury’s Essential New Books list for film students.

I’m proud to have a chapter in the book discussing the idea that while most people think Rhimes is ‘only’ a feminist, her writings have always expressed an even wider humanist philosophy.

I can only hope that my upcoming The Works of Susan Harris will make the same list. Look for it in late 2026.

Women Making History Series now in Paperback!

I’m excited to announce that the book series I co-edit with my dear friend and colleague Peg Lamphier – Women Making History – are now available in paperback which makes the books more affordable for birthday and holiday gift-buying!

Our original publisher – ABC-Clio – (who published our award-winning Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection [4 volumes]) mostly sold to libraries, so hardbacks were the way to go, but Bloomsbury recently purchased them. That means ALL our previous biographies are now in paperback. That makes them much more affordable to our friends and colleagues.

The even cooler first news is that in the last few weeks 2 more of the biographies we shepherded saw publication – one on Dolores Huerta and the other on Sally Ride — so congratulations to authors April Tellez and Jackie Perez! And these 2 new ones will be in paperback about 18-24 months after release.

Here is the email blast Bloomsbury sent out to their list of 20,000 School librarians, 10,000 Academic librarians, and 9,000 public librarians for Women’s History Month:

That means our earlier co-written books: American Women’s History on Film and The Civil War on Film are also in paperback!

But never forget even in hardback it’s worth reminding folks to ask their local libraries to stock a copy so everyone in the neighborhood can read about these accomplished women.

Finally, we have 3 more books in the works right now on Bessie Coleman, Maria Tallchief, and Frida Kahlo with a few more in the works.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Interview, Screenwriting Research Network Conversations [Video]

I sat down for an interview about my time as Chair of the Screenwriting Research Network during our last conference in Olumouc, Czech Republic, last September.

I had the chance to discuss the conference we held at Stephens College the year before, how we chose the theme, and the benefit of being a smaller group where real connections have been made. This is part of a series of oral histories on past created by the Executive Council which have morphed into these “Conversations”recorded by EC member Lucian Georgescu (with Camera and editing by Marius Donici).

You can see several other members interviewed on the SRN YouTube Channel as well.

Rosanne Interviewed About the History of Teen Idols on Cosmoetica #438: On Teen Idols [Video]

Rosanne Interviewed About the History of Teen Idols on Cosmoetica

I enjoyed discussing the phenomenon and possible importance of Teen Idols across the generations with Dan Schneider for his Cosmoetica YouTube channel. Of course, he found me thanks to my book on The Monkees ( whose subtitle is “Teenagers, Television, and American Pop Culture”) and I was happy to report on the research I had done for the book about the rise of the term “teen ager” (post WWII when high school became mandatory), those who came before the Monkees (from Sinatra to James Dean to Bobby Sherman), and those who’ve come after (from the Jackson Five to Leonardo DiCaprio to Miley Cyrus).

I shared the panel with Fred Velez who has written about Monkees fandom and together we all delved into what participating in such fandom offers the audience, how streaming and the internet have changed such fandom, and who will be the most remembered teen idols of the century.

Enjoy the watch and listen

Puchase for Kindle

Julia Crawford Ivers: From Rich Widow to Writer-Director – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, February 2025

Born just 4 years after the end of the Civil War in Boonville, Missouri, the scripts Julia Crawford Ivers wrote (and sometimes directed) often tackled issues of prejudice. After the war, her family emigrated to Los Angeles. As with many female creatives in this era, Ivers used her screenplays to highlight women’s issues from forced marriage to domestic abuse to prejudice.

Read Julia Crawford Ivers: From Rich Widow to Writer-Director

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS