PhD Courses in Denmark

Having roots in physiological and neurological studies of human movement, the cinema has been closely intertwined with science and medicine since its development at the end of the nineteenth century. This PhD course will explore cinema’s emergence as a key instrument of medical training, scientific research and health education in the first half of the twentieth century. We will explore how a range of disciplines in the human sciences turned to film as a tool of documentation, analysis and demonstration. Particular attention will be paid to the use of cinema in recording the symptoms and treatment of neuropsychological disorders as well as the deployment of film in clinical observation. The course will also consider the role played by cinema in the dissemination of health knowledge and the advancement of public health initiatives. We will explore how cinema has shaped public ideas about health, illness and treatment, and has articulated new modes of seeing the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’. The role that audience considerations have played in the production of health education films will be another key topic of discussion. As well as exploring the promise that cinema held for scientific experts, we will pay close attention to the concerns and anxieties that the new medium sparked amongst doctors and government officials. Finally, the course will explore the topic of cinema’s deployment in medical treatment, examining attempts to harness cinema’s ‘powers of influence’ in the service of therapeutic goals. Throughout the four days, the course will discuss cinema’s emergence as a key technique of managing and regulating the human mind and body while also considering the ways in which film has challenged the agendas of biomedicine. The course will include guest seminars from leading scholars in the field, and screenings of a range of medical and scientific films from the US and the UK, the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, France and Romania. Students will have the opportunity to present and discuss their work in a supportive setting. 

Academic Aim:
- To develop students’ understanding of key developments in scientific and medical cinematography from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of WWII.
- To develop knowledge of the ways in which different disciplines in the human sciences (including physiology, neurology, psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy) have used film in research, training, knowledge dissemination and treatment. 
- To further awareness of issues of production, dissemination and reception in scientific and medical filmmaking.
- To develop competency in the close analysis of the techniques and strategies of scientific and medical films.
- To develop research skills and oral communication skills through individual seminar presentations

Target group: All students are welcome, particularly those with a background in film/cultural studies, history, medicine and the psy disciplines.

Course organiser:  Anna Toropova, Postdoc, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen.

Dates and time: 21-24 May 2024 from 9 am to 4 pm.

Programme:
Day 1:
9-11 am: Origins: Physiology, Neurology and the Cinematic Analysis of Human Movement
11-11.15 Coffee Break
11:15-1pm Guest seminar: Pasi Väliaho (University of Oslo), ‘Gesture, Thought, and Cinema circa 1900’
1-2 pm: Lunch
2-4 pm: Reading Medical and Scientific Films: (A practical session introducing students to the close analysis of different types of scientific and medical film)

Day 2
9-11: Medical Cinematography during the First World War
11-11.5 Coffee Break
11:15 Guest seminar: Julia Barbara Köhne (Humboldt University, Berlin), ‘Mental Wounds on Screen: Cinematographies of “Male War Hysteria” in both World Wars’
1-2pm: Lunch
2-4pm: Cinema, Observation and the Psy-disciplines in the Interwar Period: Case Studies from Germany and the US.

Day 3:
9-11: Cinema, Audiences and Health Enlightenment
11-11.15 Coffee Break
11:15-1pm: Guest seminar: Andreas Killen (City College of New York), ‘Cinema and Psychiatry in Interwar Germany’
1-2pm: Lunch
2-4: The Hypnotic Screen: Film as Therapy

Day 4:
9.15-11 Guest seminar: Janet Harbord (Queen Mary, UK): ‘The Autistic Gesture: Film as Neurological Training’ and film screening of Autism Plays Itself (2023)
11-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-1pm Student presentations: Session 1
1-2pm Lunch
2-3.30 Student presentations: Session 2
3.30-4pm Closing discussion

Language: English

ECTS: 1.5 ECTS for participation, 3 ECTS for participation with presentation.

Max. numbers of participants: 20

Registration: Please register via email to the course organiser Anna Toropova (ant@hum.ku.dk) no later than 6 May 2024.

Further information: For more information about the PhD course, please contact the course organiser.

Literature:

Andriopoulos, Stefan. Possessed: Hypnotic Crimes, Corporate Fiction, and the Invention of Cinema (Chicago, 2008)

Bonah, Christian, and Anja Laukötter. ‘Moving Pictures and Medicine in the First Half of the 20th Century: Some Notes on International Historical Developments and the Potential of Medical Film Research’, Gesnerus 66.1 (2009): 121-46

Cantor, David, Anja Laukötter, and Christian Bonah, eds., Health Education Films in the Twentieth Century (Rochester, NY, 2018)

Cartwright, Lisa. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture (Minneapolis, 1995)

Curtis, Scott. The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany (New York, 2015)

-----. ‘“Tangible as Tissue”: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis’, Science in Context 24.3 (2011): 417-42

Gilman, Sander L. Seeing the Insane (New York: 1982).

Janet Harbord. ‘The Autistic Gesture: Film as Neurological Training’, NECSUS, 8.2 (2019): 129–48.

Killen, Andreas. Homo Cinematicus: Science, Motion Pictures, and the Making of Modern Germany (Philadelphia, 2017)

------. ‘Psychiatry and its Visual Culture in the Modern Era’, in The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health (London, 2017), 172-190

Köhne, Julia Barbara. ‘Screening Silent Resistance: Male Hysteria in First World War Medical Cinematography’, in Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese, eds., Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War (Basingstoke, 2017), pp. 49–79.

Ostherr, Kirsten. Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television, and Imaging Technologies (Oxford, 2013).

-----. Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health (Durham, N.C., 2005).

Pernick, Martin. The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of ‘Defective’ Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (New York, 1999).

Schmidt, Ulf. Medical Films, Ethics, and Euthanasia in Nazi Germany: The History of Medical Research and Teaching Films of the Reich Office for Educational Films-- Reich Institute for Films in Science and Education, 1933-1945 (Husum, 2002).

Tosi, Virgilio. Cinema before Cinema: The Origins of Scientific Cinematography, trans. by Sergio Angelini (London, 2005).

Pasi Väliaho. Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900 (Amsterdam, 2010).