Michael Baskett
Associate Professor

Department of Theatre and Film
The University of Kansas
Oldfather Studios
1621 W. 9th Street, Room 220
Lawrence, KS 66044
Phone: 785-864-1384
Fax: 785-331-2671
Email

Spring 2008 semester
Office hours:
Monday: 11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Tuesday: 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Courses:
- TH&F 302/702 Undergraduate/Graduate Seminar in Asian Media Studies (#80967/80971)
- TH&F 902 Film Seminar in: Transnational Film Cultures (#68185)
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Michael Baskett specializes in Japanese film studies and his research interests include East Asian film, Transnational and diasporic cinemas, early world cinema, and colonial film culture. Before receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. in Japanese Film and Literature from UCLA, Baskett worked in various capacities in the Japanese film industry including distribution, exhibition, and production. He was an assistant director on the 1995 feature film Flirt directed by Hal Hartley (Henry Fool, Amateur) and on the 1997 feature film The Soong Sisters directed by Mabel Cheung (An Autumn’s Tale, Beijing Rocks). He co-organized an annual international silent film festival in Osaka Japan and the “Hong Kong Film Festival ‘95” which was co-sponsored by the Hong Kong Government. Baskett was a Fulbright fellow at Waseda University (Tokyo) and has taught Japanese and Asian film courses at UCLA and the University of Oregon.

Baskett’s recent publications include the book The Attractive Empire—Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan published by the University of Hawaii Press and a chapter on the cinematic representations of the Japanese emperor in American film published in Japanese in an anthology by Iwamoto Kenji (ed.), Eiga no naka no tenno (Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2007). Baskett is Film/DVD Editor for The Moving Image and his work has appeared in China Information, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Diasporas, Japanese Studies and The Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His book chapter on the role of Imperial Japan in Axis film culture will appear in The Culture of Japanese Fascism edited by Alan Tansman (forthcoming from Duke University Press).

Baskett is now working on his next book projects which extend his interest in the historical roots of transnational cultural flows in Asia. The next book will examine the politics of Transnational film exchange in Cold War Asia – particularly among the Japanese, South Korean, and Hong Kong film industries. Following that, the next project will study the roots of transnational film exchange, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora in the Japanese and Asian/American film communities in 1920s Hollywood.