H-Sci-Med-Tech: New posted content
Fitzgibbons on Williamson, 'Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science' [Review]
Williamson, Colin. Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science. : University of Minnesota Press, 2025. Illustrations. 221 pp. $28.00 (paper), ISBN 9781517914882.
Reviewed by
Moira Fitzgibbons (Marist University)
Published on
H-Sci-Med-Tech (July, 2026)
Commissioned by
Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=62856
One day in 2010, my oldest daughter came home from school singing “The Bloodmobile,” an alluringly melodic song from the album Here Comes Science (2009) by the band They Might Be Giants. The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia created an animated video for the song, which my daughter’s science teacher showed to the class during a unit on the circulatory system.[1] We streamed the video at home and rewatched it in later years when my younger daughters saw it with their classmates. Sixteen years later, we still remember the song and the cartoon with the little red truck making its deliveries.
“The Bloodmobile” shares common ground with many of the animated cartoons explored by Colin Williamson in his fascinating book Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science. Focusing on the first six decades of the twentieth century, Williamson provides us with new ways of understanding American animation. Cartoons not only convey information about science, he argues, but also respond to scientific developments and the cultural conversations surrounding them. Engaging with studies in cinema, dance, painting, ecology, physics, and many other fields, Williamson creates a powerful argument for what he calls “transdisciplinary” approaches to animation history. To fully understand animated cartoons, we should analyze them alongside contemporary intellectual, social, and artistic movements.
Chapter 1 of Drawn to Nature investigates the work of Winsor McCay (1869-1934), whose early twentieth-century cartoons feature protagonists with dynamic bodies that wriggle, stretch, and transform into a dizzying array of shapes. In addition to acknowledging the sheer entertainment value of such characters, Williamson connects them to popular preoccupations with Darwinian evolution and with plasm as the fluid, ever-mobile basis of organic life. Williamson finds an important precedent for this plasmatic aesthetic in the performances of modernist dancer Loie Fuller. He traces her impact on French animator Emile Cohl, who in turn influenced McCay.
Chapter 2 explores an even closer link between animation and scientific discourse. Its focus is the career of Max Fleischer (1883-1972), who, with his brother Dave (1894-1979), created cartoons from the 1910s to the 1930s depicting the lively antics of Koko the Clown as well as marvels of sound, the solar system, evolution, and other scientific topics. Some of the Fleischers’ films are explicitly educational in nature; for their part, the Koko cartoons integrate cosmic and physiological science into the clown’s adventures. Not all this innovation was beneficial, however. As Williamson points out, eugenics theory found vivid expression within the Fleischers’ use of racist caricature in the Koko cartoons.
Many attributes of the Fleischers’ cartoons also emerge within the Disney oeuvre, and Williamson turns to that body of work in chapter 3. His main case study is Walt Disney Productions’ “The Rite of Spring,” a segment of the 1940 film Fantasia that narrates the history of the earth from its earliest galactic origins to the demise of the dinosaurs. Originally accompanied only by Igor Stravinsky’s music, in 1955 the film was adapted into an educational cartoon, A World Is Born, that provided scientific explanations of the cartoon’s content. Offering potent evidence for Williamson’s discussion of plasmatic qualities in cartooning, both versions of the film feature bubbling primordial soup, fiery lava, and fast-moving reptiles. Williamson explains the technical innovations that allowed these effects to emerge so vividly and notes the complex ways an audience would relate to them. Even without directly incorporating animators into the narrative, “The Rite of Spring” and other Disney films offer audiences a “double invitation—to wonder at the animated cartoon and at the process by which it is produced” (p. 95).
While audiences marveled at Disney cartoons’ lushly realistic style, by the middle of the twentieth century some animators explored alternative approaches. Chapter 4 of Drawn to Nature examines how United Productions of America (UPA) produced minimalist, precise cartoons well suited to the complexities of the atomic age. Williamson compellingly points out that many of these cartoons connected futuristic content with Christian iconography. Audiences were encouraged through animated cartoons to believe in truths—whether technological or theological—that stretched the limits of human perception.
Chapter 5 explores the work of a physicist, Elsa Garmire (1939-), whose experimental animations with lasers from the 1960s onward offered an even more radical approach to humans and nature. Instead of telling a story, Garmire created animations in which laser lights shifted and bent in response to exposure to other mediums. Laser beams thus functioned spontaneously and independently of the artist herself. Circling back to the ideas in chapter 1, Williamson notes the parallels between Garmire’s abstract, experimental approach to scientific animation and Fuller’s innovative modernist dance.
Questions of agency, technology, and creativity raised by Garmire’s and Fuller’s work have particular resonance for us now as we grapple with questions raised by large-language models and other digital developments. Williamson’s study ends with the dawn of the digital age. Although his book’s conclusion helpfully summarizes different scholarly approaches to computer-based animation, I cannot help but wish that he had addressed the digital era more fully. What contradictions does he see in more recent animated films’ approaches to nature, technology, and human agency, and how might these works intersect with the twentieth-century films he describes?
A few other pieces are missing from Williamson’s analysis. How do racial ideologies emerge within the animated films he describes, albeit in different forms than those found in the Koko cartoons? How do music and sound effects interact with the UPA films’ visual content? In addition, a list of illustrations and a bibliography would have been particularly useful to readers given the breadth of Williamson’s resources and interests.
Notwithstanding these gaps, Williamson successfully demonstrates the benefits of “allow[ing] ourselves to wander in our thinking across media and across time, and to embrace unexpected associations that are revealed in the process” (p. 159). Drawn to Nature moves fluidly—one might even say plasmatically—among an impressively wide range of artistic works, disciplinary fields, and time periods. It provides us with constructive new ways to think about both animated cartoons and scientific communication.
Note
[1]. Dr. Worm, “TMBG—The Bloodmobile,” September 26, 2006, YouTube, 2 min., 20 sec., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXyq6dOASt0&list=RDsXyq6dOASt0&start_radio=1.
Citation:
Moira Fitzgibbons.
Review of
Williamson, Colin.
Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science.
H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2026.
URL:
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=62856
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Upcoming History of Nursing events: Michael Rosen, migration and more
The Art of Nursing and Migration - with Michael Rosen (BSL)
Wednesday 8 July 2026 – online / in person (London)
Royal College of Nursing, 20 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0RN
Book online: The Art of Nursing and Migration | Event | Royal College of Nursing
Join us in person or online for this event, hosted by poet Michael Rosen with our three writers in residence - Romalyn Ante, Jennifer Wong and Christie Watson. It is the culmination of an Arts Council England National Lottery funded project, 'A Balikbayan Box for Nursing'. The title refers to the Filipino custom of migrant workers sending boxes of items back home and is inspired by Romalyn Ante’s poem 'Notes Inside a Balikbayan Box'. During our exhibition, 'Moved to Care', the RCN Library and Museum hosted one visual artist (Haleema Aziz) and three writers in residence (Romalyn Ante, Jennifer Wong and Christie Watson). This event brings all the artists together to read new work exploring the inspiration they have taken from the exhibition themes, and the experiences of migrant nurses.
From Lagos to London: Colonial Recruitment and Nigerian Nurses in the UK
Thursday 9 July, 6pm (online)
Book your place: From Lagos to London: Colonial Recruitment and Nigerian Nurses in the UK | Event | Royal College of Nursing
Between 1940 and 1960, British nursing institutions actively recruited Nigerian student nurses to address post-war health care shortages. This talk by historian Mosunmola Ogunmolaji centres on Nigerian applicants’ experiences, tracing the recruitment and application process from advertising and selection to training and placement. It reveals how British institutions leveraged colonial ties to attract Nigerian applicants while reinforcing racial and professional hierarchies.
A Home for Nursing: Behind the Scenes Tour of 20 Cavendish Square
Wednesday 5 August 2026, 3-4pm
In person tour of the RCN, 20 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0RN
Book tickets here (£9/free for RCN members): A Home for Nursing | Library | Royal College of Nursing
Join the RCN Library and Museum team on the first Wednesday of every month on this tour behind the scenes of our building. Explore the history and architecture of the RCN, famous residents – and ghosts – and the creation of a home for nursing. The tour takes around 40 minutes and will end in our exhibition, 'The Art of Nursing', with plenty of time for browsing and questions. 20 Cavendish Square was built in 1729, and contains many original features, including a grand neoclassical mural-painted staircase. The most famous resident was Liberal MP Herbert Henry Asquith, who lived here until he became prime minister in 1908. The building was purchased by Lady Cowdray for the RCN in 1920: 20 Cavendish Square became the Cowdray Club (a club for nurses and professional women opened in 1922) and a new, purpose-built College was added at the rear, formally opening in 1926.
Nurses on the Frontline: A History of Sickle Cell
Wednesday 2 September 2026, 6-7.30pm (online event)
Book here: Nurses on the Frontline: A History of Sickle Cell| Event | Royal College of Nursing
In the 1950s and 1960s, sickle cell was documented as a 'rare tropical disease’ that was not seen in western countries. But due to migration from British Colonies to the UK, an increasing number of children were born with sickle cell disease. Children and adults' desperate request for relief of the debilitating pain associated with the condition were often ignored, because healthcare professionals did not believe they were in pain or understand the serious nature of the disease. As a result, their care was often poorly managed.
In this online talk, Jenny Bangham and Lola Oni discuss the pioneering nurses who initiated and developed specialist services delivered by sickle cell and thalassaemia counsellors from the late 1970s.
Sarah Chaney (she/her)
Museum & Events Manager (Wed – Fri)
Library and Museum
Royal College of Nursing, 20 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0RN
0345 337 3368
The 