Biography
Joshua Baldelomar is a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the visual culture of medicine, the politics of mental health, and media history. His dissertation analyzes how EEG and film transformed the study of neuropsychiatric disorders from the 1930s through the postwar period. Drawing on scientific films, patient letters, and institutional memos, his project asks how brain scientists and patients both embraced and questioned approaches that treated mental disorders in technical terms, and how these studies shaped postwar military developments, educational practice, and the politics of mental health. His research has received awards from Domitor and the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, and has been supported by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Max Kade Foundation, and the Osler Library at McGill University, among others.