Scott Curtis

Department of Radio/Television/Film

Scott Curtis studies the history of film, especially early and silent-era cinema. He is particularly interested in the institutional appropriation of motion pictures, such as educational filmmaking or the use of moving image technology as a scientific research tool or diagnostic instrument. He has published on a wide variety of topics, including early film theory, film sound, animation, Hitchcock, American silent film stars, the Motion Picture Patents Company, industrial film, medical cinematography, microcinematography, and other scientific uses of motion pictures. He has held posts as the medical photographer for Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, the research archivist for the Special Collections Department of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library, and a lecturer for the Critical Studies Department of the University of Southern California. He is also the founder of and faculty advisor for Block Cinema, a co-chair of Chicago Film Seminar, and the President of Domitor, an international association dedicated to the study of early cinema.

Education

PhD	Communication, University of Iowa
MA	Communication, University of Iowa
BA	Film and Telecommunication, University of Oregon

Selected Publications

“The Last Word: Images in Hitchcock’s Working Method.” In Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, edited by Will Schmenner and Corinne Granoff. Evanston, Ill.: Block Museum of Art, in association with Northwestern University Press, 2007. 15-27. [pdf]

“A House Divided: The MPPC in Transition.” In American Cinema’s Transitional Era, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp. University of California Press, 2004. 239-264. [pdf]

“Still/Moving: Digital Imaging and Medical Hermeneutics.” In Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture, edited by Lauren Rabinovitz and Abraham Geil. Duke University Press, 2004. 218-254. [pdf]

“The Making of Rear Window.” In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, edited by John Belton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 21-56. [pdf]

“‘If It’s Not Scottish, It’s Crap!’: Harry Lauder Sings for Selig.” Film History 11.4 (December 1999): 418-425. [pdf]

“The Taste of a Nation: Training the Senses and Sensibility of Cinema Audiences in Imperial Germany.” Film History 6.4 (Winter 1994): 445‑469. [pdf]

“The Sound of the Early Warner Bros. Cartoons.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman. New York: Routledge, 1992. 191‑203. [pdf]

Recent Awards and Honors

• Northwestern University Alumnae Board Research Grant, 2008
• Faculty Honor Roll, Associated Student Government, Northwestern University, 2007 – 08
• Faculty Honor Roll, Associated Student Government, Northwestern University, 2006 – 07

Courses

Graduate seminars

• Film Theory
• An Introduction to Film and Media Historiography
• Close Analysis and Film Historiography
• The Historiography of Film and Media Exhibition
• The Concept of National Cinema
• Early Cinema and Modernity
• Medicine and the Moving Image
• Media Technology and the Body
• Useful Cinema: Research, Educational, and Sponsored Films

Undergraduate lectures and seminars

• Analyzing Media Texts (Introduction to Film Study)
• History of Film to 1939
• History of Film from WWII to the Present
• History of Animation
• Japanese Cinema
• German Cinema
• Martin Scorsese
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Film Criticism and Authorship
• The Western

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