The Celluloid Specimen : Moving Image Research into Animal Life

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In The Celluloid Specimen, Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist films of animal experiments from the 1930s and 1940s. These laboratory recordings—including Robert Yerkes's work with North American primate colonies, Yale University's rat-based simulations of human society, and B. F. Skinner's promotions for pigeon-guided missiles—have long been considered passive records of scientific research. In Schultz-Figueroa's incisive analysis, however, they are revealed to be rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in American scientific and cultural history—and remain foundational to contemporary conceptions of species, race, identity, and society.