Hybrid histories: technologies of memory and the cultural dynamics of home movies, 1895-2005

From the first moving images to home movies and YouTube vlogs: people have been fascinated with capturing their lives and their families on film since the invention of the camera in the late nineteenth century. Instead of focusing on what we film (holidays, birthday parties, first steps), this dissertation reveals how we capture these images and how the meaning we ascribe to them has changed. This dissertation calls for a hybrid approach to media history, which interweaves changes in media technology, user practices and the way we write about it in a continuous stream of coherent small and large-scale changes.