Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States

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 films 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. The book features an ambitious introductory overview of educational film practices that provides readers with a sense of how important a role film has played in producing knowledge in America both inside the classroom and out. Each essay analyzes in close detail some crucial aspect of educational film history, ranging from case studies of films and filmmakers, to analyses of genres, to broader historical assessments. Offering links to many of the films under discussion at the Internet Archive, readers will be able to easily watch for themselves many of the films studied within the book's pages. Learning With the Lights Off is both reader and classroom friendly, affording new opportunities for studying these often hard-to-find films.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Thomas G. Smith Acknowledgments About the Companion Website Introduction 1. A History of Learning with the Lights Off, Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible 2. The Cinema of the Future: Visions of the Medium as Modern Educator, 1895-1910, Oliver Gaycken 3. Communicating Disease: Tuberculosis, Narrative, and Social Order in Thomas Edison's Red Cross Seal Films, Miriam Posner 4. Visualizing Industrial Citizenship, Lee Grieveson 5. Film Education in the Natural History Museum: Cinema Lights Up the Gallery in the 1920s, Alison Griffiths 6. Glimpses of Animal Life: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema, Jennifer Peterson 7. Medical Education through Film: Animating Anatomy at the American College of Surgeons and Eastman Kodak, Kirsten Ostherr 8. Dr. ERPI Finds His Voice: Electrical Research Products, Inc. and the Educational Film Market, 1927-1937, Heide Solbrig 9. Educational Film Projects of the 1930s: Secrets of Success and the Human Relations Film Series, Craig Kridel 10. "An Indirect Influence upon Industry": Rockefeller Philanthropies and the Development of Educational Film in the United States, 1935-1953, Victoria Cain 11. Cornering The Wheat Farmer (1938), Gregory A. Waller 12. The Failure of the NYU Educational Film Institute, Dan Streible 13. Spreading the Word: Race, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Contagion in Edgar G. Ulmer's TB Films, Devin Orgeron 14. Exploitation as Education, Eric Schaefer 15. Smoothing the Contours of Didacticism: Jam Handy and His Organization, Rick Prelinger 16. Museum at Large: Aesthetic Education through Film, Katerina Loukopoulou 17. Celluloid Classrooms and Everyday Projectionists: Post-World War II Consolidation of Community Film Activism, Charles R. Acland 18. Screen Culture and Group Discussion in Postwar Race Relations, Anna McCarthy 19. "A Decent and Orderly Society": Race Relations in Riot-Era Educational Films, 1966-1970, Marsha Orgeron 20. Everything Old Is New Again; or, Why I Collect Educational Films, Skip Elsheimer with Kimberly Pifer 21. Continuing Ed: Educational Film Collections in Libraries and Archives, Elena Rossi-Snook 22. A Select Guide to Educational Film Collections, Elena Rossi-Snook Contributors Index

About the Author :
Devin Orgeron is Associate Professor at North Carolina State University and co-editor of The Moving Image, the journal of the Association for Moving Image Archivists. He is the author of Road Movies. Marsha Orgeron is Associate Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University and co-editor of The Moving Image, the journal of Association for Moving Image Archivists. She is the author of Hollywood Ambitions: Celebrity in the Movie Age. Dan Streible teaches cinema studies at New York University, where he is also associate director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. He directs the Orphan Film Project and its biennial symposium. He is the author of Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema.

Review :
"Learning with the Lights Off is a welcome contribution to the literature on educational filmmaking in the United States..." --Journal of Film and Video "Learning with the Lights Off takes on a broad but remarkably understudied area of film history with zest and depth. In exploring film's educational mission-both real and imagined-each essay in this extraordinary collection gives new insight and meaning to the 'discourse of sobriety' which scholars of nonfiction such as Bill Nichols have seen as its keystone feature. This is a rich and textured investigation that will expand scholarly focus from 'the documentary' to the 'nonfiction film,' which includes such categories as the industrial, instructional, and informational program."--Charles Musser, Yale University