If I might make an immodest suggestion, Television: Critical Methods and Applications, 3rd edition (Erlbaum, 2007), provides such a nutshell. http://tvcrit3.tvcrit.com/ Although this is a TV textbook, the animation chapter starts with 19th century devices (e.g., the Phenakistoscope) and the cinema from the 1910s-20s (e.g., McCay), includes Pixar, and ends with contemporary video game animation. In the third edition, which came out last fall, animation scholar Daniel Goldmark extended this chapter to deal with animation since the 1980s. The chapter might not be perfect for your situation as it includes some critical discussion (e.g., naturalism versus abstraction) in addition to the historical overview. You can get some sense of its orientation by checking out its illustrations, which are all online: http://www.tcf.ua.edu/tvcritgallery/main.php/v/chapter11/ Hope that's some assistance. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jason Mittell <[log in to unmask]> To: Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:41:33 -0400 Subject: History of animation in a nutshell? Hi all Iım looking for a pedagogical tool & hoping the collective wisdom of this crowd can help. Iım teaching an animation course this fall, and have decided to not structure it as a chronological history for the first time, grounding it more around topics, techniques, issues, specific auteurs, etc. But Iım thinking that Iıd like to start students with a nutshell overview of animation history to provide a skeleton to hang everything else upon Iım sure that any such overview will be significantly flawed in a range of ways, but we can work in class to discover & discuss the flaws along the way. Basically ³McCay to Pixar² in 50 pages or so (itıs fine if itıs American-centric, as it is an American Studies course). I havenıt seen any such chronological walkthrough in any of the animation literature, so I was thinking that there may be one published in a film history textbook (if it breaks out by genre or treats animation apart from live-action) or a genre handbook. Anybody know of such an essay that they could recommend? Thanks in advance, -Jason -- Jason Mittell, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Film & Media Culture Middlebury College 204 Adirondack House Middlebury, Vermont 05753 (802) 443-3435 / fax: (802) 443-5123 Homepage: http://seguecommunity.middlebury.edu/sites/jmittell Blog: http://justtv.wordpress.com -- Jeremy Butler www.ScreenLex.org www.ScreenSite.org www.TVCrit.com www.AllThingsAcoustic.org Professor - TCF Dept. - U Alabama ---- Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex podcast: http://www.screenlex.org