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Scott Curtis studies the history of film, especially early and silent-era cinema. He is particularly interested in how experts in science, medicine, and education use motion picture technology as a research tool or teaching aid. His book on this topic, (Columbia University Press, 2015), explores the collision between expert vision and moving images in science, medicine, education, and aesthetics. 

He has published extensively on the use of motion pictures in a variety of scientific fields, such as biology, physics, psychology, and medicine. He has also written on more traditional topics in film history, especially early cinema (the industry before 1915) and animation. He is the founder of , former co-chair of , and former President of , the international society for the study of early cinema. Curtis received a BA from the University of Oregon and an MA and PhD from the University of Iowa.

Research

• Science, medicine, and cinema
• Animation history and theory
• Early cinema and silent film history (especially American and German)

Teaching

• MIT 220: Analyzing Media Texts
• MIT 312: History of Film
• MIT 322: History of Animation
• MIT 398: Theories of the Moving Image

Publications

BOOKS

. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

(Series: Behind the Silver Screen). Edited by Scott Curtis. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019. 

. Edited by Scott Curtis, Philippe Gauthier, Tom Gunning, and Joshua Yumibe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018.

. Edited by Kaveh Askari, Scott Curtis, Frank Gray, Louis Pelletier, Tami Williams, and Joshua Yumibe. New Barnet, U.K.: Libbey, 2014.

Selected essays on science, medicine, and the moving image

(See also his )

“.” History of the Human Sciences 37, no. 2 (April 2024): 63-86.

(with Oliver Gaycken) “.” In The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema, edited by Rob King and Charlie Keil, 305-331. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.

(with Malcolm Cook and Michael Cowan) “.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 18, no. 3 (November 2023): 196-226.

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 61, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 147-152.

“ [Rough and Smooth: Toward a Relational Theory of Science’s Animated Image].” Scientific Fiction: Inszenierungen der Wissenschaft zwischen Film, Fakt und Fiktion, edited by Luisa Feiersinger, 30-40. Bildwelten des Wissens, volume 14. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018.

(with Robert Lue): Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 37, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 193-206.

Film History 25, no.1-2 (2013): 45–54.

In Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema, edited by Marta Braun, Charlie Keil, Rob King, Paul Moore, and Louis Pelletier, 161-167. Eastleigh and Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2012.

In The Educated Eye: Visual Culture and Pedagogy in the Life Sciences, edited by Nancy Anderson and Michael R. Dietrich, 68-93. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press, 2012.

“ [Magnification and the Microscopic Sublime].” Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 5 (2/2011): 96-110.

Science in Context 24, no. 3 (2011): 417-442.

In Film 1900: Technology, Perception, Culture, edited by Klaus Kreimeier and Annemone Ligensa, 87-98. Eastleigh and Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2009.

In Films that Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, edited by Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau, 85-99. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.

“ [The Cinematic Method: The “Animated Image” and Brownian Motion].” montage/av: Zeitschrift für Theorie & Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation 14, no. 2 (2005): 23-43.

In Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture, edited by Lauren Rabinovitz and Abraham Geil, 218-254. Duke University Press, 2004.

Selected essays in traditional film studies

(See also his )

“.” In The Audiovisual Lexicon, edited by Vincent Longo and Matthew Solomon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2026, under contract).

“.” In The Audiovisual Lexicon, edited by Vincent Longo and Matthew Solomon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2026, under contract).

“.” In Animation (Series: Behind the Silver Screen), edited by Scott Curtis, 18-47. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019.

“ [Münsterberg’s Missing Link? Ethel Puffer’s Aesthetic Theory and The Photoplay].” montage/av: Zeitschrift für Theorie & Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation 27, no.1 (2018): 31-46.

“.” In The Visual Culture of Modernism, SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 26, edited by Deborah L. Madsen and Mario Klarer, 41-59. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2011.

In Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood, edited by Daniel Goldmark and Charlie Keil, 211-227. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

In Flickers of Desire: Movie Stars of the 1910s, edited by Jennifer M. Bean, 218-241. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011.

In Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, edited by Patrice Petro, 21-40. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010.

“ [Empathy and Early German Film Theory].” In Einfühlung. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart eines ästhetischen Konzepts, edited by Robin Curtis and Gertrud Koch, 79-102. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009.

In Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, edited by Will Schmenner and Corinne Granoff, 15-27. Evanston, Ill.: Block Museum of Art, in association with Northwestern University Press, 2007.

In American Cinema’s Transitional Era, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp, 239-264. University of California Press, 2004.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, edited by John Belton, 21-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Film History 11, no. 4 (December 1999): 418-425.

Film History 6, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 445-469.

“.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman, 191-203. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Awards

Fulbright U. S. Scholar Grant, University of Innsbruck, Austria, March – June 2013.

Visiting Fellow, Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar, Germany, Spring 2011.