“Body Shots is a provocative and compelling account of the centrality of corporeal movement and stillness to early cinema. Auerbach puts theory and history into productive conversation, significantly extending our knowledge of the contexts and strategies of cinema in its early years. It is an original and important book.”—Lee Grieveson, author of Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century-AmericaWith his intense focus on the human body (the body running, the body kissing, the body posing, the body at rest), Jonathan Auerbach has managed to re-dramatize the newness of a new medium in its original decade. The combination of analytical patience, historical precision, and conceptual panache will startle readers into seeing even well-known early American films as though for the first time. In other words: Body Shots will prove to be a shot indeed.
—Bill Brown, author of A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature