Tracy Heather Strain
Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies
Associate Professor of Film Studies and Co-Director of the Wesleyan Documentary Project
Center for Film Studies, 169860-685-2632
Chair, Film Studies
AB Wellesley CollegeEDM Harvard University
Tracy Heather Strain
Tracy Heather Strain, Associate Director of the College of Film and the Moving Image, teaches documentary production, storytelling and history at Wesleyan and brings to her students an enthusiastic interest in all styles, modes, models and platforms used in crafting nonfiction stories. She is an award-winning director, producer and writer whose documentaries have been supported the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ford Foundation, Independent Television Service, LEF Foundation, among other funding organizations.
In 1999 Strain won a Peabody Award for her first two feature documentaries "Bright Like a Sun" and "The Dream Keepers" as part of the six-part Blackside/PBS series I’ll Make Me a World: A Century of African American Arts, and another in 2019 for the American Masters television broadcast of her latest directing effort, “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart,” the first feature film about the late artist/activist best-known for writing the play A Raisin in the Sun. The bio doc, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival also netted Tracy a 50th NAACP Image Award for Motion Picture Directing last year, the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award and a Creative Arts Emmy producing nomination. Her other directing and producing credits include “Building the Alaska Highway” for American Experience, “The Story We Tell” in Race: The Power of an Illusion and “When the Bough Breaks” in the duPont Columbia-award-winning Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?. She shares an Outstanding Research News & Documentary Emmy nomination for her contributions to "The Mine Wars" American Experience film. Strain is President and CEO of The Film Posse, the production company she co-founded with her partner and CFILM colleague Randall MacLowry. Together they have directed, produced and written the NEH-funded American Experience film "American Oz," which premiered April 19, 2021. The pair is developing a number of new projects.
Academic Affiliations
Office Hours
Students Hours for the remaining 2022 Spring Semester are by appointment only.
Courses
Fall 2022
FILM 385 - 01
Documentary History
FILM 430 - 01
Documentary Production
FILM 451 - 01
Intro to Digital Filmmaking
FILM 454 - 01
Screenwriting
FILM 458 - 03
Screenwriting