Public Talk and Discussion, Tuesday, May 6, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM | Communications Building 130 (Studio A)
CDAR invites all to join us for a talk and discussion with documentary studies scholar Dr. Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa. This event is co-sponsored by CDAR and the Film & Digital Media Department and is open to the public.
Comparisons between humans and animals are foundational to the experimental branches of medicine and psychology. Yet converting the bafflingly complex bodies and behaviors of nonhuman animals into scientific models is not a straightforward process. Film has been an essential, yet largely overlooked, element within this process. Often treated as purely transparent scientific recordings, the films produced out of animal research are in fact deeply formalist works that tested what film could capture through the image of an animal—variously proposing that they could visualize pure thought, the processes of history and culture, and the influence of environment on an organism.
Drawing on his recent book, The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research Into Animal Life, Schultz-Figueroa will speak and present filmed examples of primate insight and creativity, Alfred Kinsey’s experiments into animal sexuality, lab rats made to live in a model of a dystopian future, animal recreations of Marxist theory, and more. This work uncovers a dynamic field of scientific looking, where the distinctions between nature and culture are inscribed and reinscribed into animal images, generating concepts that broadly shaped the politics of immigration, labor relations, educational practice, and gender identity, well beyond the walls of the lab.
| Dr. Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa is Associate Professor of Film and Media at Seattle University. His research focuses on the history of scientific filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and animal studies. Among other venues, his writing has been published in JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History and Journal of Environmental Media. His book The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (University of California Press) was published in 2023. He is currently working on two other book projects, tentatively titled “Against Encounter: The Problem of Organicism in Animal Documentary,” and “Beastly Futures: Right Wing Animal Aesthetics in the 21st Century.” |