Body, Capital and Screens

Christian Bonah is professor for the history of medical and health sciences at the University Strasbourg, member of its Institute of Advanced Studies and principle investigator of the ERC Advanced grant BodyCapital. He works on comparative, social and material history of health, health products and services and bodies especially in connection with media and law. Anja Laukötter is a historian of 19th and 20th Century European history working in the field of social and cultural history and history of science. She is a researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and co-principle investigator of the ERC Advanced grant BodyCapital. Besides other things, the main field of her research is the transnational/global history of media, the history of emotions and the history of psychology and pedagogy.

"From the mid-twentieth century onwards, televisual media has actively shaped relations between human bodies, health practices and market forces. By paying close critical attention to the nuances of these connections, Body, Capital and Screens makes an important intervention in the field of European and global health history, and presents a convincing argument for the value of engaging with visual resources in historiographic research."- Fiona Johnstone, Durham University, European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health (2021) "Die beiden Wissenschaftler_innen, die bereits zuvor in Co-Autorenschaft veröffentlichten, verbinden elf Beiträge, die auf der Mikroebene visuelle Kommunikationsformen analysieren. Dabei bearbeiten die Autor_innen dokumentarische Filme, Lehrfilme und Fernsehformate ebenso wie Amateurvideos. So passt sich das Buch perfekt in die Reihe „Media Matters“ der Amsterdam University Press ein, die den Fokus auf die Verflechtungen von Materialität und Performativität in alten und neuen Medien legt. [...] Den Herausgeber_innen gelingt es, strategische Gesundheitskommunikation und Medienwissenschaft zu vereinen. Diese interdisziplinäre Forschungsperspektive findet im deutschsprachigen Raum erst selten Anwendung."- Charmaine Voigt (Leipzig), MEDIENwissenschaft 03-04/2021 "Der von Christian Bonah und Anja Laukötter herausgegebene Sammelband ist ein überaus gelungenes Beispiel für die Implementierung der Funktionsprinzipien des zeitgemäßen historisch-kulturwissenschaftlichen Denkens in eine interdisziplinäre und international ausgerichtete Veröffentlichung. [...] Die immense Vielfalt an inhaltlichen Positionen und Ergebnissen, die vor diesem Hintergrund an konkreten thematischen Beispielen deutlich werden, macht den Sammelband in seiner Gänze zu einem höchst anregenden und lesenswerten Text."- Stefan Zahlmann, Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien, H-Soz-Kult, 2021

• Body, Capital, and Screens: An Introduction, 1. Playing the Doctor, Playing the Patient: The Performance of Health Identities in Live Medical Television, 1958, 2. The BBC's Children in Need Telethon: The Currencies of Compassion, 3. Let's Talk about S=: The Influence of Cinema Verité on Sex Education in French National Television around 1968, 4. Measuring Subjectification: The Reception of Health Education Campaigns and the Evaluation Conundrum, 5. Swimming the Crawl to Educate the Modern Body-Visual Material and the Expanding Market for Participatory Sports in the USA, 1890s-1930s, 6. Inside Magoo (1960): Cancer and Comedic Commentary on 1950s America, 7. 'One Feels so Much in These Times!': Emotional Education and the Construction of New Subjectivities: Sex Education Films in Early 1960s GDR, 8. Revealing Norms and Sowing Confusion: VALIE EXPORT's Body, 9. 'Before Education, Good Food, and Health': World Citizenship and Biopolitics in UNESCO's Post-war Literacy Films, 10. From Colonial to Global: Visuals and the Historiography of Body Government beyond Europe, 11. Zika Virus, Global Health Communication, and Dataveillance, Index