Michael Baskett

Michael Baskett is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies whose research focuses on historical features of Japanese cinema, East Asian cinemas, film and media history, Cold War cinemas, and transnational and colonial cinemas.

After earning a doctoral degree from UCLA, Baskett was a Fulbright fellow at Waseda University and a Japan Foundation Visiting Professorship at Meiji University. Previously, Baskett worked in the Japanese film industry in distribution, exhibition, and production and was an assistant director on the feature films Flirt directed by Hal Hartley (Henry Fool, Amateur) and The Soong Sisters directed by Mabel Cheung (An Autumn's Tale, Beijing Rocks).

Baskett’s major publications include The Attractive Empire—Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2008) and (co-edited with William Tsutsui) The East Asian Olympiads, 1934-2008: Building Bodies and Nations in Japan, Korea, and China (Brill, 2011). Baskett's work has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and French, and appeared in a variety of journals including China Information, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Diasporas, Japanese Studies, and The Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Currently, he is completing a book manuscript that examines Japan's Cold War cinema and the politics of transnational film exchange in Cold War Asia. He also is preparing a monograph on Ziv Television.