Scott Curtis

Scott Curtis studies the history of film, especially early and silent-era cinema. He is particularly interested in how experts in science, medicine, and education use motion picture technology as a research tool or teaching aid. His book on this topic, The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany (Columbia University Press, 2015), explores the collision between expert vision and moving images in science, medicine, education, and aesthetics. He has published extensively on the use of motion pictures in a variety of scientific fields, such as biology, physics, psychology, and medicine. He has also written on more traditional topics in film history, especially animation and early cinema. He has held posts as the medical photographer for Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, Oregon; the research archivist for the Special Collections Department of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library; and a lecturer for the Cinema and Media Studies Division of the University of Southern California. He is also the founder of Block Cinema, former co-chair of Chicago Film Seminar, former President of Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema, and former Director of the Communication Program at Northwestern University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. He is currently stationed at the Doha campus.

Education

• PhD, Communication, University of Iowa
• MA, Communication, University of Iowa
• BA, Film and Telecommunication, University of Oregon

Selected Publications

Books

• The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany. Columbia University Press, 2015.
• Animation (Series: Behind the Silver Screen). Edited by Scott Curtis. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019.
• The Image in Early Cinema: Form and Material. Edited by Scott Curtis, Philippe Gauthier, Tom Gunning, and Joshua Yumibe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018.
• Performing New Media, 1890-1915. Edited by Kaveh Askari, Scott Curtis, Frank Gray, Louis Pelletier, Tami Williams, and Joshua Yumibe. New Barnet, U.K.: Libbey, 2014.

Selected essays on science, medicine, and the moving image
(See also his Academia.edu page)

• “Behavior Takes Form: Tracing the Film Image in Scientific Research.” History of the Human Sciences 37, no. 2 (April 2024): 63-86.
• (with Oliver Gaycken) “Cinema and Science in the Silent Era.” In The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema, edited by Rob King and Charlie Keil, 305-331. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.
• (with Malcolm Cook and Michael Cowan) “Useful Animation: Iconography, Infrastructure and Impact.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 18, no. 3 (November 2023): 196-226.
• “Animated Images in a Media History of Science.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 61, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 147-152.
• “Grob und glatt. Über eine relationale Theorie des wissenschaftlichen Animationsbildes [Rough and Smooth: Toward a Relational Theory of Science’s Animated Image].” Scientific Fiction: Inszenierungen der Wissenschaft zwischen Film, Fakt und Fiktion, edited by Luisa Feiersinger, 30-40. Bildwelten des Wissens, volume 14. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018.
• (with Robert Lue): “Bridging Science, Art, and the History of Visualization: A Dialogue between Scott Curtis and Robert Lue.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 37, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 193-206.
• “Science Lessons.” Film History 25, no.1-2 (2013): 45–54.
• “Dissecting the Medical Training Film.” In Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema, edited by Marta Braun, Charlie Keil, Rob King, Paul Moore, and Louis Pelletier, 161-167. Eastleigh and Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2012.
• “Photography and Medical Observation.” In The Educated Eye: Visual Culture and Pedagogy in the Life Sciences, edited by Nancy Anderson and Michael R. Dietrich, 68-93. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press, 2012.
• “Vergrösserung und das mikroskopische Erhabene [Magnification and the Microscopic Sublime].” Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 5 (2/2011): 96-110.
• “Tangible as Tissue: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis.” Science in Context 24, no. 3 (2011): 417-442.
• “Between Observation and Spectatorship: Medicine, Movies, and Mass Culture in Imperial Germany.” In Film 1900: Technology, Perception, Culture, edited by Klaus Kreimeier and Annemone Ligensa, 87-98. Eastleigh and Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2009.
• “Images of Efficiency: The Films of Frank B. Gilbreth.” In Films that Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, edited by Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau, 85-99. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
• “Die kinematographische Methode. Das <Bewegte Bild> und die Brownsche Bewegung [The Cinematic Method: The “Animated Image” and Brownian Motion].” montage/av: Zeitschrift für Theorie & Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation 14, no. 2 (2005): 23-43.
• “Still/Moving: Digital Imaging and Medical Hermeneutics.” In Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture, edited by Lauren Rabinovitz and Abraham Geil, 218-254. Duke University Press, 2004.

Selected essays in traditional film studies
(See also his Academia.edu page)

• “Animation: Cel.” In The Audiovisual Lexicon, edited by Vincent Longo and Matthew Solomon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2026, under contract).
• “Animation: Rubber Hose vs. Squash and Stretch.” In The Audiovisual Lexicon, edited by Vincent Longo and Matthew Solomon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2026, under contract).
• “The Silent Screen, 1895–1928.” In Animation (Series: Behind the Silver Screen), edited by Scott Curtis, 18-47. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019.
• “Münsterbergs Missing Link? Die ästhetische Theorie Ethel Puffers und The Photoplay [Münsterberg’s Missing Link? Ethel Puffer’s Aesthetic Theory and The Photoplay].” montage/av: Zeitschrift für Theorie & Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation 27, no.1 (2018): 31-46.
• “The Efficiency of Images: Educational Effectiveness and the Modernity of Motion Pictures.” In The Visual Culture of Modernism, SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 26, edited by Deborah L. Madsen and Mario Klarer, 41-59. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2011.
• “Tex Avery’s Prison House of Animation, or Humor and Boredom in Studio Cartoons.” In Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood, edited by Daniel Goldmark and Charlie Keil, 211-227. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
• “Douglas Fairbanks: Icon of Americanism.” In Flickers of Desire: Movie Stars of the 1910s, edited by Jennifer M. Bean, 218-241. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011.
• “Douglas Fairbanks: King of Hollywood.” In Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, edited by Patrice Petro, 21-40. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
• “Einfühlung und die frühe deutsche Filmtheorie [Empathy and Early German Film Theory].” In Einfühlung. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart eines ästhetischen Konzepts, edited by Robin Curtis and Gertrud Koch, 79-102. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009.
• “The Last Word: Images in Hitchcock’s Working Method.” In Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, edited by Will Schmenner and Corinne Granoff, 15-27. Evanston, Ill.: Block Museum of Art, in association with Northwestern University Press, 2007.
• “A House Divided: The MPPC in Transition.” In American Cinema’s Transitional Era, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp, 239-264. University of California Press, 2004.
• “The Making of Rear Window.” In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, edited by John Belton, 21-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• “‘If It’s Not Scottish, It’s Crap!’: Harry Lauder Sings for Selig.” Film History 11, no. 4 (December 1999): 418-425.
• “The Taste of a Nation: Training the Senses and Sensibility of Cinema Audiences in Imperial Germany.” Film History 6, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 445-469.
• “The Sound of the Early Warner Bros. Cartoons.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman, 191-203. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Selected Awards and Honors

• Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant, University of Innsbruck, Austria, March – June 2013
• Visiting Fellow, Graduiertenkolleg Mediale Historiographien, Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar, Germany, Spring 2011
• Faculty Honor Roll, Associated Student Government, Northwestern University, 2008 – 09
• Faculty Honor Roll, Associated Student Government, Northwestern University, 2007 – 08
• Faculty Honor Roll, Associated Student Government, Northwestern University, 2006 – 07

Courses

Graduate Seminars

• Film Theory
• An Introduction to Film and Media Historiography
• Useful Cinema: Research, Educational, and Sponsored Films
• Medicine and the Moving Image

Undergraduate Lectures and Seminars

• Analyzing Media Texts (Introduction to Film Study)
• History of Animation
• History of Film
• Theories of the Moving Image