Lisa Dombrowski ’92 majored in film studies but had no intention of becoming a professor. Fast forward to today, and she’s an associate professor. We sat down with her to discuss her time at Wes, both then and now.
Argus: What was the evolution like from student to professor?
Professor Lisa Dombrowski: When I was a student, I had no intention of becoming a professor. No one in my family had pursued advanced degrees; no one in my family was in academia. It never occurred to me as an option. As I went on at Wesleyan, I began working as a writing tutor and eventually in my last year, I was hired as a Ford Fellow at the Writing Workshop. In the 5th year that I took as a Ford Fellow, I was also a TA in the Film Studies Department. Professor Jeanine Basinger and Anne Greene convinced me that perhaps graduate school and academia was something that I might be interested in. I didn’t quite believe them. I went and worked in New York for a number of years as a writer and an editor. During that period, I realized that I missed the interaction that came with the academic stetting. When I was writing and was done, my work went out into the world but I never got to see what people thought of it. I missed the immediate give and take that is a part of the intellectual experience within the world of the University and that is when I started to think more seriously about graduate school in Film History and Aesthetic. That was something that I wanted to pursue. I applied to graduate school in late 1990s and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When I was working on my dissertation, a position opened up at Wesleyan. Professor Basinger encouraged me to apply. I did. I started back at Wesleyan in January 2001, this time as a professor.
A: What was your time like at Wesleyan?
LD: Wesleyan appealed to me because it was a small campus but still one that stressed diversity both in terms of academic experiences that were offered and in terms of the student body. It also appealed to me that there were no required courses. I came to Wesleyan and it wasn’t what I necessarily expected. I had never been to New England before. I was coming from a very small Catholic girls’ school in northeast Ohio. I imagined Connecticut to be a bucolic, pastoral state and was really thrilled to discover how varied the state actually is. I was thrilled to see that it had a post-industrial history. At Wesleyan, I encountered types of students from backgrounds that I never would have before. I really got interested very quickly in Film, my first semester here. I also became involved in WESU. The two, the Film department and WESU, formed the basis of my existence at Wesleyan. This was true for all five years at Wesleyan. I started out with a tight knit group of friends, but by my fifth year when most of my friends had graduated I was meeting a wider range of people from all sides of campus. It was my best year at Wesleyan. It forced me to be more social, forced me to investigate parts of Wesleyan and Middletown that I had never paid attention to before. I got a lot out of that experience.
A: Why did you decide to attend Wesleyan?
LD: Wesleyan changed my life. It gave me the field that I ended up pursuing— Film Studies. Many of my current friends are Wesleyan alumns. Several of my post-collegiate boyfriends are from Wesleyan. Wesleyan impacted my personal life as well as my academic life. I’ve had regrets about things that I did and did not do at school, but I have never had regrets about going to Wesleyan.
A: I read that you came to Wesleyan with the notion that you would major in English and History. Why did you choose to become a Film Studies and American studies double major?
LD: My first semester at Wesleyan, I took a Film class that actually is no longer offered as the professor has since retired. There was no Film program offered in my high school. I realized that I did not know how to think analytically about movies. I felt at the time, even though this perception was incorrect, that I did know how to write an English and History paper but not a film paper. That challenge appealed to me. As I continued in Film, it opened up new ways of thinking about a field of art that I found really exciting and challenging. That is what drew me to Film. My father was not very excited about that choice. He did not think that it was very practical to major in Film. He encouraged me to double major, so I did in American Studies because it enabled me to continue my interest in History and English and organized a series of classes that focused on the twentieth century, which I thought was complementary with Film. As time went on, I was able to convince my dad that Film was worthwhile. I talked to him about the industry and the economics of film—he comes from manufacturing. I knew that if I talked to him about film as a manufactured product, then we would reach an agreement on that too.
A: What were some of your favorite courses at Wesleyan?
LD: I think one of the key Film courses for me was the first one I took with Professor Basinger, which was “Comedy.” It was important because it was the first upper level Film class that I took. I was a sophomore and most of the students in the course were juniors and seniors. I didn’t know them and I felt that I had to prove myself. The TA was a woman named Susan Glatzer. She is still very active in the alumni community and film industry. She was very encouraging of me. I worked in a small group for a presentation on the film The Apartment with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. When I got through that presentation with my peers and felt that I contributed to it, then I knew that I could hold my own. By my senior year, when I took “Hitchcock” with Professor Basinger, my group was composed of a few women. We studied Bunny Lake Is Missing, directed by Otto Preminger. We went to Olympia diner, it was the only diner open all night at the time, and hashed out the presentation together. Our presentation rocked and the three of us are still really good friends.
A: What are some of your memories as an undergraduate?
LD: It was a tumultuous time for Wesleyan. I was here during the years when the campus was very involved in anti-apartheid movement. I was here during the years of the Chace administration when the president’s office was firebombed, when there was racist graffiti that appeared in Malcolm X House. It was a real period of questioning regarding race relations on campus and relationships between the student body and the administration. There were a lot of positive things about my experience but it was also a difficult time.
By the end of my years at Wesleyan, the economy was in a recession—as it is today—there was less money on campus and fewer job opportunities off campus. When we were graduating a lot of my friends went into the service industry—they worked at coffee shops, bookstores, video stores. It was a period like today when students were leaving school with uncertainty regarding what they would find in the world outside. My generation was a little more pessimistic than today’s generation of students. We were not encouraged to think in professional terms earlier. There were fewer kids with internship experience but a lot of people had work experience, like scooping ice cream over the summer as opposed to being the assistant to a high power executive. We had less ambition. A lot of my friends took a good part of their 20’s to figure out their lives. We are very impressed with the kids coming out of school today who seem to have a much better sense of what opportunities might lie ahead in the fields that they are interested in.
A: How has your perspective changed from being a student to a professor?
LD: There certainly is a change in perspective because I am playing a different role on campus now. I am aware of different things. When I was a student, I was not aware of what went on between the administration and the faculty. I wasn’t aware of the economic issues that the University was suffering with at the time. I did not know that the Film Studies department was separating from the Art department, which had previously been its umbrella department. As a professor, there are bigger picture issues that I am more aware of now. The flip side is that I am not that in touch with the student experience today. I still get questions from alumni like “What is it like for students today?” and “What drugs are students doing these days?” A lot of these questions I can’t answer, students don’t tell me.
A: Who are some professors that you studied with that are still at Wesleyan, in addition to Professor Jeanine Basinger and Professor Anne Greene?
LD: Professor Richard Slotkin, who just retired was very key, particularly for my American studies classes. Professor Khachig Tölölyan made a big difference for me. Professor Joel Pfister let me in to an upper level American literature class, which nearly killed me during my first semester at Wesleyan. We read so many books and I’m a slow reader! The course gave me a foothold in American literature and in English that was really significant for me. In the History department Professor Ronald Schatz gave me a C on a paper, it was my first C ever, and I was shocked. I went back and reread the paper and I said “You know what, he was right. This is not very good.” I learned a lot from that C.