Frederick Lewis

Education

A.M. Brown University
B.A. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Bio

Prior to transitioning to higher education, Professor Lewis was, for 14 years, a producer, writer, director and program/production manager based in New England. During that span he worked in commercial, cable and public television, producing everything from documentaries and public affairs programs to corporate video, commercials and Division I college basketball.

His independent documentaries have been seen on PBS affiliates throughout the U.S. and screened at more than 125 cultural/educational venues, including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, and at the world headquarters of The Explorers Club in NYC. These projects have taken him to Russia, Greenland, Argentina, Chile (sailing to Cape Horn), Denmark, Ireland, Newfoundland and Alaska.

Lewis is an internationally known authority on the life of controversial artist, adventurer and social activist Rockwell Kent (1882-1971). Ann Hornaday, chief film critic for the Washington Post, wrote that his three-hour documentary on Kent "plays like a two-part installment of PBS’s American Masters," calling it "a sweeping, detailed, visually rich portrait of a man who emerges as a complex, compelling and finally contradictory force of nature, a charismatic reflection of the eras in which he lived..."

Professor Lewis has been an Arctic Studies Fellow at the Uummannaq Polar Institute in Greenland, researching Rockwell Kent’s two extended visits to the region in the 1930s. He has twice been a writer in residence at Landfall, an artist’s retreat in Brigus, Newfoundland that was Kent’s home in 1914-15. His free-lance articles have appeared in The Scandinavian Review, Fine Art Connoisseur, Newfoundland Quarterly and Library of Congress Magazine among other publications.

A 2:49 marathon runner (back in the day), Lewis is the producer, writer and director of That Golden Distance, an Emmy winning documentary about the Boston Marathon during the 1930s and ‘40s, and the author of Young at Heart: The Story of Johnny Kelley, Boston’s Marathon Man, published by Rounder Books.

Professor Lewis wrote, directed and co-produced Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask. This Emmy winning two-hour documentary about the life and legacy of the first African American writer to gain national prominence has played on PBS’s WORLD channel and on PBS affiliate stations nationwide. It has screened at film festivals in Paris, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston, and been presented at numerous venues, including the Library of Congress, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Atlanta History Center and the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.

For 18 years, Frederick Lewis taught MDIA "419" a year-long program in advanced narrative production that produced 64 film projects, including Trailerpark, a full-length feature based on the work of Russell Banks, and Monhegan Light, adapted from a story by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo. These projects immersed an average of 70 students per year in all aspects of filmmaking, from script development, budgeting and fundraising to casting, location scouting, production, post-production and publicity.

Hundreds of Lewis’s students have gone on to work in all aspects of the entertainment and corporate production industries for organizations such as Lucasfilm, Scott Free Productions (Ridley Scott), Jim Henson Productions, DreamWorks Animation, International Creative Management (now CAA), iHeartMedia, Laika, Teton Gravity and Major League Baseball. Several have served as writers, story editors and/or producers for shows such as Family Guy, Community, NCIS, Supergirl and the current version of Fraggle Rock.

Professor Lewis has designed and directed 25 study abroad programs in 8 countries, serving more than 300 students. He taught Screenwriting and Documentary Storytelling for 9 summers in County Donegal, Ireland and 8 times in Seville, Spain over winter break. Other programs and projects were based in Morocco, Germany, Ecuador, Malaysia and Guyana. Currently Lewis directs a summer project in Screenwriting and Documentary Storytelling in London, England for the Institute for Education in International Media (ieiMedia.com/London) and teaches in the Scripps College of Communication’s Semester in Washington, DC program.

A long-time practitioner of project-based learning, Frederick Lewis is a recipient of the Presidential Teacher Award, Ohio University’s highest honor for transformative teaching, curriculum innovation and mentoring. Quoth Confucius, "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand."

Professor Lewis has been a Fulbright Specialist at the University of Pecs in Hungary, and a teaching fellow at the Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University in Yorkshire, UK, where he taught the school’s first ever courses in documentary production and studies. He has also taught in the graduate school of journalism at the University of Kiev-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine, and been a U.S. Embassy (Berlin, Germany) lecturer at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and Freiberg University of Technology. Working with the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Lewis designed and delivered a series of modules on production aesthetics and scriptwriting for 25 media makers representing the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense, as well as several news outlets and NGOs.

Lewis has conducted workshops at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam, and at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He has also been a guest lecturer at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France and at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.

Professor Lewis previously taught at Boston University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and for three summers at the International Film and Television Workshops in Rockport, Maine.

Research Interests

Documentary Production and Studies

Screenwriting

Presentations and Awards

Presidential Teacher Award