I was invigorated and intrigued by the scholarly rigor, historical acumen, and interdisciplinary incentive of Scott Curtis's book. It brings significant inflections to our understanding of the multiple determinations of early German cinema as well as more generally to the complex relations between film and science.
Eric Rentschler, Harvard University, author of The Use and Abuse of Cinema This important, historiographically innovative book examines a wide range of materials from the fields of aesthetics, education, medicine, and science-and Curtis knows how to read early film-theoretical texts like poetry. An original contribution to media archaeology, Curtis's research illuminates new sources in the debates about the promise and possible uses of cinema in Germany and beyond.
Tony Kaes, University of California, Berkeley and author of Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War Scott Curtis has produced a fascinating study of the uses of cinema within medicine, science, and education in Germany in the early twentieth century. An exhaustive archival dig into cinema's uses by experts, The Shape of Spectatorship will itself shape conversations about cinema's usefulness as a way of observing and changing the world.
Alison Griffiths, author of Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View