Against the grain of the growing literature on screens, *Screen Genealogies* argues that the present excess of screens cannot be understood as an expansion and multiplication of the movie screen nor of the video display. Rather, screens continually exceed the optical histories in which they are most commonly inscribed. As contemporary screens become increasingly decomposed into a distributed field of technologically interconnected surfaces and interfaces, we more readily recognize the deeper spatial and environmental interventions that have long been a property of screens. For most of its history, a screen was a filter, a divide, a shelter, or a camouflage. A genealogy stressing transformation and descent rather than origins and roots emphasizes a deeper set of intersecting and competing definitions of the screen, enabling new thinking about what the screen might yet become.

[Craig Buckley](https://arthistory.yale.edu/people/craig-buckley) is an assistant professor of Modern and Contemporary architecture in the History of Art Department at Yale University.[Rüdiger Campe](https://german.yale.edu/people/rudiger-campe) is the Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of Germanic Languages & Literatures at Yale University.[Francesco Casetti](https://filmstudies.yale.edu/people/francesco-casetti) is the Thomas E. Donnelly Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University.

CHAP 00 INTRODUCTION Craig Buckley, Rüdiger Campe, and Francesco CasettiSECTION ONE: 'Becoming Screen'CHAP 01 Primal ScreensFrancesco Casetti, Yale UniversityCHAP 02 'Schutz und Schirm': Screening in German During Early Modern TimesRüdiger Campe, Yale UniversitySECTION TWO: SpacesCHAP 03 Face and Screen: Toward a Genealogy of the Media FaçadeCraig Buckley, Yale UniversityCHAP 04 Sensing Screens: From Surface to SituationNanna Verhoeff, Utrecht University CHAP 05 'Taking the Plunge': The New Immersive ScreensAriel Rogers, Northwestern UniversitySECTION THREE: AtmospheresCHAP 06 The Atmospheric Screen: Turner, Hazlitt, RuskinAntonio Somaini, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3CHAP 07 The Fog Medium: Visualizing and Engineering the AtmosphereYuriko Furuhata, McGill University CHAP 08 The Charge of a Light Barricade: Optics and Ballistics in the Ambiguous Being of ScreensJohn Durham Peters, Yale UniversitySECTION FOUR: Formats CHAP 09Flat Bayreuth: A Genealogy of Opera as ScreenedGundula Kreuzer, Yale University CHAP 10Imaginary Screens: The Hypnotic Gesture and Early FilmRuggero Eugeni, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - MilanCHAP 11Material. Human. Divine. Notes on the Vertical ScreenNoam M. Elcott, Columbia UniversityINDEX