I’m excited that we have a publication date for an essay collection I’m contributing to. Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States will be published by Oxford in winter 2011. The editors are Marsha Orgeron, Devin Orgeron, and Dan Streible. From the flyer:
Learning with the Lights Off is the first collection of essays to address the phenomenon of film’s educational uses in twentieth-century America. Nontheatrical film in general and educational films in particular represent an exciting new area of inquiry in media and cultural studies. This collection illuminates a vastly influential form of filmmaking seen by millions of people around the world. The essays reveal significant insights into film’s powerful role in twentieth century American culture as a medium of instruction and guidance.
My essay is on Thomas Edison’s Red Cross Seal films, which I’ve posted about here. I really liked working with Marsha, Devin, and Dan. Their edits made my work much, much stronger. The full list of contributors:
Introduction: A History of Learning with the Lights Off, Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible
1. The Cinema of the Future: Visions of the Medium as Modern Educator, 1895-1910, Oliver Gaycken
2. Communicating Disease: Tuberculosis, Narrative, and Social Order in Thomas Edison’s Red Cross Seal Films, Miriam Posner
3. Visualizing Industrial Citizenship, Lee Grieveson
4. Film Education in the Natural History Museum: Cinema Lights Up the Gallery in the 1920s, Alison Griffiths
5. Glimpses of Animal Life: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema, Jennifer Peterson
6. Medical Education through Film: Animating Anatomy at the American College of Surgeons and Eastman Kodak, Kirsten Ostherr
7. Dr. ERPI Finds His Voice: Electrical Research Products, Inc. and the Educational Film Market, 1927-1937, Heide Solbrig
8. Educational Film Projects of the 1930s: Secrets of Success and the Human Relations Series, Craig Kridel
9. “Education, Broadly Interpreted”: Rockefeller Philanthropies and the Development of Educational Film, 1935-1946, Victoria Cain
10. Cornering The Wheat Farmer (1938), Gregory A. Waller
11. The Failure of the NYU Educational Film Institute, Dan Streible
12. Spreading the Word: Race, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Contagion in Edgar G. Ulmer’s TB Films,Devin Orgeron
13. Exploitation as Education, Eric Schaefer
14. Smoothing the Contours of Didacticism: Jam Handy and His Organization, Rick Prelinger
15. Museum at Large: Aesthetic Education through Film, Katerina Loukopoulou
16. Celluloid Classrooms and Everyday Projectionists: Post-WWII Consolidation of Community Film Activism, Charles R. Acland
17. Screen Culture and Group Discussion in Postwar Race Relations, Anna McCarthy
18. “A Decent and Orderly Society”: Race Relations in Riot-Era Educational Films, 1966-1970, Marsha Orgeron
19. Everything Old Is New Again; or, Why I Collect Educational Films, Skip Elsheimer with Kimberly Pifer
20. Continuing Ed: Educational Film Collections in Libraries and Archives, Elena Rossi-Snook
21. A Select Guide to Educational Film Collections, Elena Rossi-Snook
It’s exciting to be in such august company.