Art or Film Major

johnwesley
Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:34:39 +0000

Yes, it’s faculty. Also, philosophy and setting. Jeanine Basinger, the department chairwoman, did not even have a Ph.D when she was first hired as a lecturer some thirty-five years ago. But, her enthusiasm, immense curiosity, and, collegiality not only drew students to her early classes, but also some of the biggest hitters among the English, American Studies and Art department faculties in fashioning a really trailblazing approach to the study of film, an approach that combined the essentials of liberal arts learning: observation, analysis and, above all, good writing. That approach continues to this day.

Combine all of that with superb facilities (paid for by successful graduates) and you have an almost irresistible setting for the study of motion pictures, the most uniquely American of art forms. There are facilities for 16mm, digital and virtual production, but, the emphasis is always on collaboration, between disciplines, between students and between departments. “Film culture is a big part of the Wesleyan campus”, said Prof. Scott Higgins, author of the recently published, “Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s”, the first scholarly history of Technicolor technology. Frankly, I can’t think of another film department anywhere with the kind of cultural footprint that it has at Wesleyan.