Wondrous Difference - Cinema, Anthropology, & Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture

Erscheinungsjahr 2002
ISBN: 978-0-231-11696-1
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 528 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 780 g

Reihe: Film and Culture Series

The ethical and ideological implications of cross-cultural image-making continue to stir debate among anthropologists, film scholars, and museum professionals. This innovative book focuses on the contested origins of ethnographic film from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s, vividly depicting the dynamic visual culture of the period as it collided with the emerging discipline of anthropology and the new technology of motion pictures. Featuring more than 100 illustrations, the book examines museums of natural history, world's fairs, scientific and popular photography, and the early filmmaking efforts of anthropologists and commercial producers to investigate how cinema came to assume the role of mediator of cultural difference at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Griffiths, Alison

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part I: Precinema and Ethnographic Representation 1. Life Groups and the Modern Museum Spectator2. Science and Spectacle: Visualizing the Other at the World's Fair3. Knowledge and Visuality in Nineteenth-Century AnthropologyPart II: Early Ethnographic Film in Science and Popular Culture 4. The Ethnographic Cinema of Alfred Cort Haddon and Walter Baldwin Spencer5. "The World Within Your Reach'': Popular Cinema and Ethnographic RepresentationPart III: First Steps: The Museum and Early Filmmakers 6. Early Ethnographic Film at the American Museum of Natural History7. Finding a Home for Cinema in Ethnography: The First Generation of Anthropologist-Filmmakers in America8. Conclusion: The Legacy of Early Ethnographic Film

Über Autor(innen)

Alison Griffiths is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. The work on which this book is based won the Society for Cinema Studies dissertation prize.