Download CV (PDF)

Biography

Dr. Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa earned his PhD in Film and Digital Media from University of California Santa Cruz and his MA in Media Studies from The New School. His research and teaching focus on the History of Scientific Filmmaking, Nontheatrical Film, Animal Representations on Film, Science Fiction and Horror. He has several forthcoming publications on these topics, including a chapter detailing connections between the Victorian visual culture of physiology and early debates about filming vivisections for the book Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form: Corporeality and Early Cinema; an article examining the influence of rat experiments on the use of educational media during the 1950s, which will be published in the Winter 2019 edition of Film History; and an essay analyzing the multiple uses of film in B.F. Skinner’s World War II research into pigeon-guided missiles, which will be in Summer 2019 edition of Cinema Journal. He looks forward to teaching History of Film, Animals and Film, Science and the Cinema, Film Theory, and Science Fiction Film in the Film Studies program at Seattle University in the upcoming academic year.