Physiological modernism [electronic resource] : Cinematography as a medical research technology, 1895-1960.

1991

1 online resource (335 p.)

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-12, Section: A, page: 4111.

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This dissertation examines the intersections of medical science and the cinema through an investigation of the physiological film motion study. The chronophotography of French physiologist Etienne Jules Marey is presented as the basis for the development of the cinematic motion study as a technique used in medical scientific research and diagnosis between 1895 and 1960 in Europe, Britain and the U.S. This thesis argues that the instruments and methods of graphic recording introduced in European physiology during the nineteenth century were critical to the emergence of a set of filmic codes, techniques and methods antithetical to those of the emergent popular cinema. The codes, techniques and methods of the physiological film motion study are considered in the context of a tradition of visual culture extending beyond the perimeters of the scientific. It is argued that the scope of film modernism can be extended to incorporate scientific visual production, and that modernist cultural production in the arts is uniquely marked by scientific discourse and visual production. This modernist tradition of film study reaches its height in the postwar X-ray cinematography of avant-garde filmmaker and physician James Sibley Watson, Jr. This thesis employs feminist film theory to analyze medical research films, related writings, and the role of the physician, researcher or technician as producer and spectator of his or her films. Material considered includes the physiological film studies of students of Marey in such fields as biology and neurology, the intersections of neurophysiological film study in Germany and the U.S., and the use of cinematography for microscopic and radiographic research and diagnosis in U.S. medical science.

Books / Online / Dissertations & Theses

English

July 12, 2011

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1991.

Yale University.