FORTHCOMING FROM OXFORD

Winter2011

Learning with the Lights Off
Educational Film in the United States
Edited by Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible• The most comprehensive collection on educational films ever published• Features discussions of little-known and long-neglected classroom films• Explores film uses beyond the classroom in such areas as industry, public health, and museum education• Includes 20 original essays and a guide to collections
Learning with the Lights Off is the first collection of essays to address the phenomenon of film’s educational usesin twentieth-century America. Nontheatrical film in general and educational films in particular represent anexciting new area of inquiry in media and cultural studies. This collection illuminates a vastly influential form offilmmaking 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.
This book features an ambitious introductory overview of educational film practices that provides readers witha sense of how important a role film has played in producing knowledge in America, both inside the classroomand out. Each essay analyzes in close detail some crucial aspect of educational film history, ranging from casestudies of films and filmmakers, to analyses of genres, to broader historical assessments. Offering links to manyof the films under discussion at the Internet Archive and a guide to educational film collections in archives andlibraries, 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 insights and pathways forstudying these illuminating films.

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 director of the Moving Image
Archiving and Preservation program. He directs the Orphan Film Project and its biennial symposium. He isthe author of Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema.
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FORTHCOMING FROM OXFORD
Table of Contents

Introduction: A History of Learning with the Lights Off, Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible
1.

The Cinema of the Future: Visions of the Medium as Modern Educator, 1895-1910, Oliver Gaycken

2.

Communicating Disease: Tuberculosis, Narrative, and Social Order in Thomas Edison's Red Cross Seal Films,Miriam Posner3.

Visualizing Industrial Citizenship, Lee Grieveson

4.

Film Education in the Natural History Museum: Cinema Lights Up the Gallery in the 1920s, Alison Griffiths

5.

Glimpses of Animal Life: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema, Jennifer Peterson

6.

Medical Education through Film: Animating Anatomy at the American College of Surgeons and Eastman
Kodak, Kirsten Ostherr

7.

Dr. ERPI Finds His Voice: Electrical Research Products, Inc. and the Educational Film Market, 1927-1937,
Heide Solbrig

8.

Educational Film Projects of the 1930s: Secrets of Success and the Human Relations Series, Craig Kridel

9.

“Education, Broadly Interpreted": Rockefeller Philanthropies and the Development of Educational Film,
1935-1946, Victoria Cain

10.

Cornering The Wheat Farmer (1938), Gregory A. Waller

11.

The Failure of the NYU Educational Film Institute, Dan Streible

12.

Spreading the Word: Race, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Contagion in Edgar G. Ulmer's TB Films,
Devin Orgeron

13.

Exploitation as Education, Eric Schaefer

14.

Smoothing the Contours of Didacticism: Jam Handy and His Organization, Rick Prelinger

15.

Museum at Large: Aesthetic Education through Film, Katerina Loukopoulou

16.

Celluloid Classrooms and Everyday Projectionists: Post-WWII Consolidation of Community Film Activism,Charles R. Acland

17.

Screen Culture and Group Discussion in Postwar Race Relations, Anna McCarthy

18.

"A Decent and Orderly Society": Race Relations in Riot-Era Educational Films, 1966-1970, Marsha Orgeron

19.

Everything Old Is New Again; or, Why I Collect Educational Films, Skip Elsheimer with Kimberly Pifer

20.

Continuing Ed: Educational Film Collections in Libraries and Archives, Elena Rossi-Snook

21.

A Select Guide to Educational Film Collections, Elena Rossi-Snook

Available winter 2011
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