J. E. Smyth is a historian, critic, and Professor of History at the University of Warwick.

Smyth has written and edited several books, including a new edition of Jane Allen’s Hollywood novel, I Lost My Girlish Laughter (Random House, 2019) and Nobody’s Girl Friday (Oxford University Press, 2018), a history of the many high-powered women who worked in the golden age of the Hollywood studio system (1924-1954).

She was awarded the Richard Wall Special Jury Prize by the Theatre Library Association, the International Association of Media Historians' Michael Nelson Prize, a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, and the Association of American Publishers Award. She was a Getty Research Institute scholar-in-residence and contributed to the award-winning PBS documentary, Children of Giant (2015).

She was awarded an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences film scholar grant in 2021.

Her latest book, Mary C. McCall Jr.: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter, was published by Columbia University Press in September 2024 and was profiled in the Observer in July 2024.