Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film

Peterson, Jennifer Lynn

ISBN 10: 0822354535 / ISBN 13: 9780822354536

Published by Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013

About this Item

235 x 155 mm. xxiv, 369 pp + 8 pp colour plates. Pictorial card covers. A clean, bright copy. Spine not creased. B&w figures in the text. Endnotes, filmography, bibliography, index.

Seller Inventory # 69042A

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film
• Publisher: Duke University Press, Durham and London
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822354535
• ISBN 13: 9780822354536
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Near Fine
• Book Type: Book

About this title

Synopsis

In the earliest years of cinema, travelogues were a staple of variety film programs in commercial motion picture theaters. These short films, also known as "scenics," depicted tourist destinations and exotic landscapes otherwise inaccessible to most viewers. Scenics were so popular that they were briefly touted as the future of film. But despite their pervasiveness during the early twentieth century, travelogues have been overlooked by film historians and critics. In Education in the School of Dreams, Jennifer Lynn Peterson recovers this lost archive. Through innovative readings of travelogues and other nonfiction films exhibited in the United States between 1907 and 1915, she offers fresh insights into the aesthetic and commercial history of early cinema and provides a new perspective on the intersection of American culture, imperialism, and modernity in the nickelodeon era.

Peterson describes the travelogue's characteristic form and style and demonstrates how imperialist ideologies were realized and reshaped through the moving image. She argues that although educational films were intended to legitimate filmgoing for middle-class audiences, travelogues were not simply vehicles for elite ideology. As a form of instructive entertainment, these technological moving landscapes were both formulaic and also wondrous and dreamlike. Considering issues of spectatorship and affect, Peterson argues that scenics produced and disrupted viewers' complacency about their own place in the world.

About the Author

Jennifer Lynn Peterson is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.