Introductory description

Having roots in late nineteenth-century studies of human movement and neurological disorders, the cinema has been closely intertwined with science and medicine since its emergence. This module will trace cinema’s development as a key instrument of medical training, scientific research and health education in the first half of the twentieth century. In seminars, we will explore how a range of disciplines in the human sciences turned to film as a tool of documentation, analysis, demonstration and public communication. Examining how the cinematic medium has shaped ideas about health, illness and treatment, the module explores film’s role in articulating new modes of seeing the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

The course will be taught over 9 weeks. The first part of the module (weeks 1-5) will cover the use of film in the analysis of human movement, in clinical observation and in the advancement of public health initiatives. The second part of the course (weeks 6-9) will explore attempts to study the film viewer’s psychophysiology, to harness cinema’s powers in the service of therapeutic goals, and to translate medical and scientific ideas into a popular vernacular. We will also consider the ‘dark side’ of medical cinema—the use of film in the advancement of eugenic agendas.

This is an indicative module outline (actual sessions may differ):

Week 1: Physiology, Neurology and the Cinematic Analysis of Human Movement

Week 2: Reading Medical and Scientific Films

Week 3: Medical Cinematography during the First World War

Week 4: Cinema, Observation and the Psy-disciplines in the Interwar Period

Week 5: Cinema, Health Enlightenment and Behaviour Transformation

Week 6: Probing the Heart and Mind of the Viewer: Scientific Enquiries into Film Spectatorship

Week 7: The Hypnotic Screen: Film as Therapy

Week 8: Cinema and Eugenics

Week 9: Freud comes to Hollywood: Medical Themes in Popular Cinema

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the ways in which film has been deployed in medicine and the human sciences from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of WWII.
• Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity.
• Generate ideas through the analysis of medical and scientific films as well as other primary source material including photographs, medical brochures and scientific reports.
• Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing interdisciplinary scholarship on medical and scientific filmmaking.

Indicative reading list

Andriopoulos, Stefan. Possessed: Hypnotic Crimes, Corporate Fiction, and the Invention of Cinema (Chicago, 2008).

Barboi, Alexandru C., et al. ‘The Origins of Scientific Cinematography and Early Medical Applications’, Neurology, 62.11 (2004): 2082–86.

Bonah, Christian, and Anja Laukötter. ‘Moving Pictures and Medicine in the First Half of the 20th Century: Some Notes on International Historical Developments and the Potential of Medical Film Research’, Gesnerus 66.1 (2009): 121-46.

Cantor, David, Anja Laukötter, and Christian Bonah, eds., Health Education Films in the Twentieth Century (Rochester, NY, 2018).

Cartwright, Lisa. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture (Minneapolis, 1995).

Curtis, Scott. The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany (New York, 2015).

-----. ‘“Tangible as Tissue”: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis’, Science in Context 24.3 (2011): 417-42.

Geroulanos, Stefanos, and Todd Meyers. The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Gilman, Sander L. Seeing the Insane (New York: 1982).

Harbord, Janet. ‘The Visualization of Autism: Filming children at the Maudsley Hospital, London 1957-8’, History of Human Sciences (2024).

Jones, Edgar. ‘War Neuroses and Arthur Hurst: A Pioneering Medical Film about the Treatment of Psychiatric Battle Casualties’, Journal of the History of Medicine and the Allied Sciences, 67.3 (2012): 345–73.

Killen, Andreas. Homo Cinematicus: Science, Motion Pictures, and the Making of Modern Germany (Philadelphia, 2017).

------. ‘Psychiatry and its Visual Culture in the Modern Era’, in The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health (London, 2017), 172-190.

Landeker, Hannah. ‘Microcinematography and the History of Science and Film’, Isis, 97.1 (2006): 121-132.

Ostherr, Kirsten. Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television, and Imaging Technologies (Oxford, 2013).

-----. Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health (Durham, N.C., 2005).

Pernick, Martin. The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of ‘Defective’ Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (New York, 1999).

Schmidt, Ulf. Medical Films, Ethics, and Euthanasia in Nazi Germany: The History of Medical Research and Teaching Films of the Reich Office for Educational Films-- Reich Institute for Films in Science and Education, 1933-1945 (Husum, 2002).

Toropova, Anna. ‘The Hypnotic Screen: The Early Soviet Experiment with Film Psychotherapy’, Social History of Medicine, 35.3 (2022): 946-971.

Tosi, Virgilio. Cinema before Cinema: The Origins of Scientific Cinematography, trans. by Sergio Angelini (London, 2005).

Väliaho, Pasi. Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900 (Amsterdam, 2010).

------. ‘Cinema’s Memoropolitics: Hypnotic Images, Contingent Pasts, Forgetting’, Discourse, 33.3 (2011): 322–41.

Winter, Alison. ‘Screening Selves: Sciences of Memory and Identity on Film, 1930-1960’, History of Psychology, 7.4 (2004): 367-401.

Interdisciplinary

The module aims to bring together the history of science and medicine, and film studies.

International

The primary sources deployed in the module include medical and scientific films from the US and the UK, the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, France and Romania.

Subject specific skills

Students will:

Acquire a detailed knowledge of the ways in which film has been deployed in medicine and the human sciences from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of WWII;

Generate ideas through the analysis of medical and scientific films as well as other primary source material including photographs, medical brochures and scientific reports;

Acquire skills in analysing and evaluating the contributions made by existing interdisciplinary scholarship on medical and scientific filmmaking.

Transferable skills

Students will be able to:

Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity;

Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.