Wondrous Difference

Alison Griffiths is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. The work on which this book is based won the Society for Cinema Studies dissertation prize.

• Part I: Precinema and Ethnographic Representation 1. Life Groups and the Modern Museum Spectator 2. Science and Spectacle: Visualizing the Other at the World's Fair 3. Knowledge and Visuality in Nineteenth-Century Anthropology Part II: Early Ethnographic Film in Science and Popular Culture 4. The Ethnographic Cinema of Alfred Cort Haddon and Walter Baldwin Spencer 5. "The World Within Your Reach": Popular Cinema and Ethnographic Representation Part III: First Steps: The Museum and Early Filmmakers 6. Early Ethnographic Film at the American Museum of Natural History 7. Finding a Home for Cinema in Ethnography: The First Generation of Anthropologist-Filmmakers in America 8. Conclusion: The Legacy of Early Ethnographic Film

A significant contribution to knowledge about methods of recording and presenting visual culture of non-Western peoples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Choice With fascinating examples and illustrations culled from a number of international archives,Wondrous Difference is an invaluable resource for cinema historians, anthropologists, archivists, and museum professionals... Griffiths is working within a new tradition of scholars approaching visuality with a historically integrated and culturally critical perspective... The masterful way in which Griffiths navigates and reveals the complexity of these relationships sets a standard for others to follow. -- Amy J. Staples Film Quarterly Wondrous Difference will make an excellent... textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in both visual anthropology and the history of anthropology. -- Deborah Poole Current Anthropology