Introduction. The celluloid specimen : moving image research into animal life -- Stimulating intelligence : IQ exams and the cinema -- "Getting a feeling for the animal :" ape affects onscreen -- Primate figures : social darwinism, anthropology, and ingagi -- Rodent simulations : stimulus-response, laboratory rats and a southern lynch mob -- Distributed suffering : animal experiments, speculative modeling, and their effects -- From lab to classroom : animal testing and educational film -- Project pigeon : rendering the war animal through optical technology -- A trip through the senses : the media theory of radical behaviorism -- Utopian behavior : the televisual figure of a pigeon that hailed the future -- Conclusion : sensing our place in history.
Summary:
"The Celluloid Specimen examines twentieth-century behaviorist films that captured animal experiments, revealing the central role of cinema in generating psychosocial definitions of species, race, identity, and culture that continue to shape our contemporary political and scientific discourses. Benjami̹n Schultz-Figueroa analyzes rarely seen archival films made by Robert Yerkes in the 1930s at the first experimental primate colonies in North America, the rat films made to simulate human society at Yale University in the 1930s and 1940s, and the promotional films made by B.F. Skinner to sell the U.S. military on his design for a pigeon-guided missile during World War II. These laboratory films have long been categorized as passive recordings of scientific research, but when examined in their own right, they become rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in the history of science"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.