It evolved into a formal department in 2000, with its own faculty and with Basinger as chair, a role she relinquished in 2016 before retiring in 2020, by which time that department had evolved into the College of Film and the Moving Image. Under her leadership, by 1990 film had become a standalone program and major at Wesleyan separate from the art department, cross-listing courses with the art department and other established departments. Because of Basinger, Wesleyan increasingly became seen as a place for Hollywood figures to deposit their archives among those who have done so are Elia Kazan, Frank Capra, and eventually the aforementioned Clint Eastwood. She was a pioneer of taking Hollywood film seriously as a subject of academic study, teaching the work of Clint Eastwood as early as 1971. In 1970, she and then-student Laurence Mark established a student-run film series that eventually became the country's longest-lasting such series. Basinger eventually received the title of Professor of Film Studies, and later an endowed chair as Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies.

This soon evolved into her teaching a class at Wesleyan on her own, beginning in 1969, despite lacking the usual academic credentials. In the late 1960s, art professor John Frazer recruited her into helping him set up the university's first 'serious film course' at a time when it was, according to Sam Wasson, unclear what that meant.

Career īasinger first arrived in Middletown, Connecticut, where Wesleyan University is located, in 1960 as marketing director of American Education Publications, then owned by the university and later sold to Xerox. She attended and received her BS and MS from South Dakota State University.

That job put her in the position of seeing the same film over and over, to which she attributes learning to see 'the way films… the audience, … where they work and where they don't.' She first became interested in film there, at The College Theater, where she worked as an usher as early as age 11. Education īasinger was raised in Brookings, South Dakota. Jeanine Basinger (born 3 February 1936, Ravenden, Arkansas ) is an American film historian who retired in 2020 as the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies and Founder and Curator of The Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.

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