Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early film culture, and screen praxes overall areinherently embodied. Contributors argue that on- and offscreen (and in affiliated media and technological constellations), the body consists of flesh and nerves and is not just an abstract spectator or statistical audience entity.

Audience responses from arousal to disgust, from identification to detachment, offer us a means to understand what spectators have always taken away from their cinematic experience. Through theoretical approaches and case studies, scholars offer a variety of models for stimulating historical research on corporeality and cinema by exploring the matrix of screened bodies, machine-made scaffolding, and their connections to the physical bodies in front of the screen.

Marina Dahlquist is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. She is editor ofExporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze.

Jan Olsson is Professor of Cinema Studies and former Head of Department at Stockholm University. He is author ofHitchcock à la Carte.

Valentine Robert is Lecturer of Film Studies at the University of Lausanne. She is editor (with Laurent Le Forestier and François Albera) ofLe Film sur l'art. Entre histoire de l'art et documentaire de creation.

Doron Galili is Research Fellow in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University.

Introduction / Marina Dahlquist, Doron Galili, Jan Olsson, and Valentine Robert

Part I: Impossible BodiesPart I Introduction1. The Impossible Body of Early Cinema / Tom Gunning2. Ovidian Violence: Georges Méliès' Explosive Screen Bodies / Vito Adriaensens3. Le corps sous le scalpel de la presse illustrée et du cinema / Jérémy Houillère4. Ghosts and their Nationality in the Fin De Siècle Machinery / Ian Christie

Part II: Inventories of the BodyPart II Introduction5. Field Trip to Insanity: Bodies and Minds in the Doctor Maestre Film Collection (Spain, 1915) / Luis Alonso García, Daniel Sánchez Salas, and Begoña Soto Vázquez6. Celluloid Specimens: Animal Origins for the Moving Image / Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa7. Death by a Thousand Cuts: On-screen Executions in Early American Cinema / Gary D. Rhodes8. Corps mis en scène, corps mis en cage: le cinématographe au temps des zoos humains / Rodolphe Gahéry9. "Stills from a Film that Is Missing": Indigenous Images and the Photographic Interval in Early Cinema / Joanna Hearne

Part III: Performing BodiesPart III Introduction10. Risky Business: The Early Film Actor and Discourses of Danger / Charlie Keil and Denise McKenna11. Bodies in Motion: Dancing and Boxing in Early Norwegian Cinema / Gunnar Iversen12. The Beauty of the Forzuti: Irresistible Male Bodies On and Off Screen / Ivo Blom13. Nudity in Early Cinema, or the Pictorial Transgression / Valentine Robert14. Paul Capellani: Le corps à l'épreuve du cinema / Sébastien Dupont-Bloch

Part IV: Bodily FeaturesPart IV Introduction15. Poils et pilosités dans le cinéma des origins / Jean-Claude Seguin16. Lumière Agents in Mexico: The "Body" of Film as a Late-Nineteenth-Century Discourse / John Fullerton17. Breathing Faces, Blinking Eyes: On Cinematic Visage in Russian Films of the 1910s / Oksana Chefranova18. Making Faces: Character and Makeup in Early Cinema / Alice Maurice

Part V: Embodied AudiencesPart V Introduction19. "Keep It Dark": the Fatale Attraction of the Female Viewer's Body / Mireille Berton20. "The Best Synonym of Youth": Stanley Hall, Mimetic Play, Early Cinema's Embodied Youth Spectator / Christina Petersen21. Perils of Cinema? The German Cinema Debate and the "Nerve-Racking" Medium / Stephanie Werder22. The Taste of the Moment Seems All for "Pictures": Irish Historical Bodies before the Early Cinema Screen / Denis Condon

Part VI: Bodies in Exhibition SpacesPart VI: Introduction23. Le corps du spectateur en mouvement: effets réels et virtuels des spectacles tridimensionnels / Martin Barnier24. Perfuming Devices, Purifying Discourses: The Fight against Filthy Theaters and Foul Air / Judith Thissen25. Moving the Spectator, Dancing with the Screen: Early Dance Instruction Films and reconfigurations of film spectatorship in the 1910s / Kristina Köhler26. A Rational and Entertaining Species of Amusement to Bipeds of All Ages: The Splendid Camera Obscura / Alison Reiko Loader

Appendix: English Translations of French Essays27. The Body under the Scalpel in the Illustrated Press and the Cinema / Jérémy Houillère28. Staged Bodies, Caged Bodies: Early Cinema in the Age of Human Zoos / Rodolphe Gahéry29. Paul Capellani: The Body Put to the Test by Cinema / Sébastien Dupont-Bloch30. Hair and Hairiness in Early Cinema / Jean-Claude Seguin31. The Viewer's Body in Motion: Physical and Virtual Effects of Three-dimensional Spectacles / Martin BarnierIndex