Filmic humanities

A work-in-progress seminar in the MUSTS research group:

Identifying an intellectual space to develop the role of film as part of a research method in the humanities.

In this session, I would like to think about how we might use film as part of a research method in a humanities context.  I am particularly interested in how the recent work of colleagues from anthropology, social semiotics and related social-sciences disciplines might inform this.

The field of embodied cognition acknowledges the sophisticated role of the body in framing and understanding knowledge and expertise (in Polyani’s famous phrase, ’we know more than we can tell’).  The related field of multimodality recognises non-textual, non-verbal contributions to knowledge.  These areas of scholarship, I suggest, constitute a premise for engaging with film as a serious medium in the academic context – to use the medium to record, arrange, and interpret non-written and non-spoken information.  Film has been applied in such a way in social sciences contexts for over a decade, especially by those working with ethnographic film making.  But although methods for visual, object, and performance analysis obviously exist in the humanities, (to my knowledge) no equivalent approach exists reconciling film and multimodality in a humanities framework.

To think through this work in progress, I will draw on a specific historical case study concerning the invention of the triangulation technique of vascular anastomosis at the turn of the twentieth century.  The technique is ascribed to the surgeon Alexis Carrel, and although his drive and vision were undeniably important, it is rarely even acknowledged that he was taught to sew by one of France’s leading embroiderers, Marie Anne Leroudier.  By using re-enactment methods and film, I suggest, we might acknowledge her substantial contributions to Carrel’s material understanding, thread management, and needlework, and build a case to revisit her historical significance in the history of medicine as well as embroidery.

Bio

Paul Craddock is a cultural historian of medicine, his main area of expertise being the cultural history of transplant surgery.  Dragon in a Suitcase (Fig Tree/Penguin) explores transplant surgery from the sixteenth century to the present day, and will be his first book. Paul is currently Research Film Maker on the V&A Research Institute’s Encounters on the Shop Floor project led by Dr Marta Ajmar.  Encounters highlights the role of embodied knowledge in medical and creative craft, industry, and education.  He is also working with Dr Anna Harris at the on her Making Clinical Sense project. As a film maker for research and cultural institutions, Paul is currently working with Imperial College, London, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.  His earlier film work has been featured in Nature, the Frankfurt Book Fair, and MoMA. Paul holds an honorary appointment Senior Research Associate in the Division of Surgery and Interventional Sciences at UCL Medical School in London.  He is represented by Jenny Hewson at Lutyens and Rubenstein Literary Agency.

A filmmaking workshop for the Skillslab:

Op donderdagmiddag 30 januari verzorgen Anna Harris en Paul Craddock een workshop “film making” in het Skillslab. Anna kennen de meesten van jullie als de antropologisch onderzoeker die vorig jaar frequent in het Skillslab aanwezig was voor haar onderzoek “Making Clinical Sense” (http://www.makingclinicalsense.com/). Paul Craddock, een cultureel geschiedkundige die zich ook bezig houdt met het maken van filmmateriaal voor onderzoek en culturele instellingen, is deze en volgende maand in Maastricht om samen te werken met Anna in het kader van haar onderzoek (https://paulcraddock.com/).  We zullen stilstaan bij de verschillende manieren om video te gebruiken in academische context. Waarom zou je je als academicus met het maken van filmmateriaal bezig willen houden? Wat heb je eraan? Wat zijn de mogelijkheden?  Vervolgens zal Paul ons een aantal tips geven m.b.t. filmen (met name compositie en interviewen). Als er tijd is zullen we dit zelf ook uit gaan proberen. Daarna zullen we in kleine groepjes bespreken en experimenteren hoe het gebruik van video bruikbaar zou kunnen zijn voor de aanwezigen. Omdat we beperkte tijd hebben zullen we weinig tijd besteden aan het daadwerkelijk editen van videomateriaal. Degenen die dat interessant vinden, hebben de mogelijkheid om met Paul apart nog een afspraak te maken om dit te leren.

And a film screening as part of the MUSTS colloquia series:

Unexpectedly, there was a window of opportunity to follow-up on Paul ’s work-in-progress seminar on developing the role of film as part of a research method in the humanities and he presented in the MUSTS colloquia series. We screened a selection of his short films as and about research including the film concerning the fascinating links between the history of embroidery and surgical skills—the one Craddock introduced us to last time: “A Film about Skin”. In addition, we screened films about DNA-RNA transformations performed as dance, the history of laparoscopic surgery, the epiploic cube, the history of the flush lavatory, the role of touch in pottery and music making, and more.