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 film and the history of science or medicine
“Grob und glatt. Über eine relationale Theorie des wissenschaftlichen Animationsbildes.” 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.
“Between Photography and Film: Early Uses of Medical Cinematography.” REMEDIA: The History of Medicine in Dialogue with Its Present. (19 January 2016).
(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.
“Objectivity in Early Scientific and Medical Film Viewing.” Objectivity and the Effects of Truth: Early Cinema and the Realist Tradition, edited by Àngel Quintana and Jordi Pons, 33-40. Girona, Spain: Fundació Museu del Cinema/Ajuntament de Girona, 2015.
“Science Lessons.” Film History 25.1-2 (2013): 45–54. [pdf]
“Dissecting the Medical Training Film.” In Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema, edited by Marta Braun, Charlie Keil, RobKing, Paul Moore, and Louis Pelletier, 161-167. Eastleigh and Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2012. [pdf]
“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. [pdf]
“Vergrösserung und das mikroskopische Erhabene [Magnification and the Microscopic Sublime].” Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 5 (2/2011): 96-110. [pdf]
“Tangible as Tissue: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis.” Science in Context 24.3 (2011): 417-442. [pdf]
“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. Eastleigh and Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2009. 87-98 [pdf]
“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. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. 85-99 [pdf]
“Die kinematographische Methode. Das 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. Duke University Press, 2004. 218-254. [pdf]
Selected essays in traditional film studies
(with Jocelyn Sage Mitchell) “Old Media, New Narratives: Repurposing Inconvenient Artifacts for the National Museum of Qatar.” Journal of Arabian Studies 8, no. 2 (December 2018): 1-34.
“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.
“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. [pdf]
“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. [pdf]
“Douglas Fairbanks: King of Hollywood.” In Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, edited by Patrice Petro. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010. 21-40 [pdf]
“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. Evanston, Ill.: Block Museum of Art, in association with Northwestern University Press, 2007. 15-27. [pdf]
“A House Divided: The MPPC in Transition.” In American Cinema’s Transitional Era, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp. University of California Press, 2004. 239-264. [pdf]
“The Making of Rear Window.” In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, edited by John Belton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 21-56. [pdf]
“‘If It’s Not Scottish, It’s Crap!’: Harry Lauder Sings for Selig.” Film History 11.4 (December 1999): 418-425. [pdf]
“The Taste of a Nation: Training the Senses and Sensibility of Cinema Audiences in Imperial Germany.” Film History 6.4 (Winter 1994): 445-469. [pdf]
“The Sound of the Early Warner Bros. Cartoons.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman. New York: Routledge, 1992. 191-203. [pdf]
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
- Close Analysis and Film Historiography
- The Historiography of Film and Media Exhibition
- The Concept of National Cinema
- Early Cinema and Modernity
- Medicine and the Moving Image
- Media Technology and the Body
- Useful Cinema: Research, Educational, and Sponsored Films
Undergraduate lectures and seminars
- Analyzing Media Texts (Introduction to Film Study)
- History of Film to 1939
- History of Film from WWII to the Present
- History of Animation
- Japanese Cinema
- German Cinema
- Martin Scorsese
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Film Criticism and Authorship
- The Western
- Cinephilia, Curating, and Criticism
