The Celluloid Specimen : Moving Image Research into Animal Life / Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schultz-Figueroa, Benjamin, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animals in motion pictures--20th century.

Animals in motion pictures.

Laboratory animals.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In The Celluloid Specimen, Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist films of animal experiments from the 1930s and 1940s. These laboratory recordings—including Robert Yerkes's work with North American primate colonies, Yale University's rat-based simulations of human society, and B. F. Skinner's promotions for pigeon-guided missiles—have long been considered passive records of scientific research. In Schultz-Figueroa's incisive analysis, however, they are revealed to be rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in American scientific and cultural history—and remain foundational to contemporary conceptions of species, race, identity, and society.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life

Part One. A Science of Sympathy: The Films of Robert Mearns Yerkes

Introduction

1 Stimulating Intelligence: IQ Exams and the Cinema

2 “Getting a Feeling for the Animal” Ape Affects Onscreen

3 Primate Figures: Social Darwinism, Anthropology, and Ingagi

Conclusion to Part One. Expressive Labor

Part Two Model Animals: Neal E. Miller’s Motivation and Reward in Learning

4 Rodent Simulations: Stimulus-Response, Laboratory Rats, and a Southern Lynch Mob

5 Distributed Suffering. Animal Experiments, Speculative Modeling, and Their Effects

6 From Lab to Classroom: Animal Testing and Educational Film

Conclusion to Part Two. Scientific Folklore in “A Sea of Potential Facts”

Part Three. Posthuman Control. B. F. Skinner and the Onscreen Pigeon

7 Project Pigeon: Rendering the War Animal through Optical Technology

8 A Trip through the Senses: The Media Theory of Radical Behaviorism

9 Utopian Behavior: The Televisual Figure of a Pigeon That Hailed the Future

Conclusion to Part Three. The Pigeon as a Figure for Our Times

Conclusion: Sensing Our Place in History

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Mrz 2023)

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

ISBN:

9780520974609

OCLC:

1343298645