Learning with the Lights Off

A vastly influential form of filmmaking seen by millions of people, educational films provide a catalog of twentieth century preoccupations and values. As a medium of instruction and guidance, they held a powerful cultural position, producing knowledge both inside and outside the classroom. This is the first collection of essays to address this vital phenomenon. The book provides an ambitious overview of educational film practices, while each essay analyzes a crucial aspect of educational film history, ranging from case studies of films and filmmakers to broader generic and historical assessments. Offering links to many of the films, Learning With the Lights Off provides readers the context and access needed to develop a sophisticated understanding of, and a new appreciation for, a much overlooked film legacy.

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 is the author of Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible: A History of Learning with the Lights Off
1: Oliver Gaycken: The Cinema of the Future: Visions of the Medium as Modern Educator, 1895-1910
2: Miriam Posner: Communicating Disease: Tuberculosis, Narrative, and Social Order in Thomas Edison's Red Cross Seal Films
3: Lee Grieveson: Visualizing Industrial Citizenship
4: Alison Griffiths: Film Education in the Natural History Museum: Cinema Lights Up the Gallery in the 1920s
5: Jennifer Peterson: Glimpses of Animal Life: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema
6: Kirsten Ostherr: Medical Education through Film: Animating Anatomy at the American College of Surgeons and Eastman Kodak
7: Heide Solbrig: Dr. ERPI Finds His Voice: Electrical Research Products, Inc. and the Educational Film Market, 1927-1937
8: Craig Kridel: Educational Film Projects of the 1930s: Secrets of Success and the Human Relations Series
9: Victoria Cain: Education, Broadly Interpreted": Rockefeller Philanthropies and the Development of Educational Film, 1935-1946
10: Gregory A. Waller: Cornering The Wheat Farmer (1938)
11: Dan Streible: The Failure of the NYU Educational Film Institute
12: Devin Orgeron: Spreading the Word: Race, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Contagion in Edgar G. Ulmer's TB Films
13: Eric Schaefer: Exploitation as Education
14: Rick Prelinger: Smoothing the Contours of Didacticism: Jam Handy and His Organization
15: Katerina Loukopoulou: Museum at Large: Aesthetic Education through Film
16: Charles R. Acland: Celluloid Classrooms and Everyday Projectionsists: Post-WWII Consolidation of Community Film Activism
17: Anna McCarthy: Screen Culture and Group Discussion in Postwar Race Relations
18: Marsha Orgeron: "A Decent and Orderly Society": Race Relations in Riot-Era Educational Films, 1966-1970
19: Skip Elsheimer with Kimberly Pifer: Everything Old Is New Again; or, Why I Collect Educational Films
20: Elena Rossi-Snook: Continuing Ed: Educational Film Collections in Libraries and Archives
21: Elena Rossi-Snook: A Select Guide to Educational Film Collections