Body, Capital, and Screens: Visual Media and the Healthy Self in the 20th Century

Body, Capital and Screens: Visual Media and the Healthy Self in the 20th Century brings together new research from leading scholars from Europe and North America working at the intersection of film and media studies and social and cultural history of the body. The volume focuses on visual media in the twentieth century in Europe and the U.S. that informed and educated people about life and health as well as practices improving them. Through a series of in-depth case studies, the contributors to this volume investigate the relationships between film/television, private and public actors of the health sector and economic developments. The book explores the performative and interactive power of these visual media on individual health understandings, perceptions and practices. Body, Capital and Screens aims to better understand how bodily health has evolved as a form of capital throughout the century.

Christian Bonah, MD, PhD, 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. PD Dr. 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, the main field of her research is the transnational/global history of media, the history of emotions and the history of psychology and pedagogy.