Tuesday, May 06, 2025
12:00-1:30pm
Communications Building, Classroom 130
Comparisons between humans and animals are foundational to the experimental branches of medicine and psychology. Yet converting the bafflingly complex bodies and behaviours 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 visualise pure thought, the processes of history and culture, and the influence of environment on an organism. Drawing on his recent book, 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. 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. 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 projects, tentatively titled Against Encounter: The Problem of Organicism in Animal Documentary and Beastly Futures: Rightwing Animal Aesthetics in the 21st Century.
Hosted by the Center for Documentary Arts and Research and the Film & Digital Media Department.