Scott Boehm
sboehm@msu.edu
(517) 884-6307
B452 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyRomance and Classical StudiesFilm StudiesGlobal Studies in Arts and Humanities
Assistant Professor
Spanish
Biography
Scott Boehm is Assistant Professor of 20th/21st Spanish Culture and the Founder/Director of the MSU Latinx Film Festival. He is a Core Faculty member of the Global Studies in the Arts & Humanities Program, as well as an Affiliated Faculty member of the Film Studies Program. He currently serves as the Graduate Advisor to the M.A. in Hispanic Literatures and Ph.D. in Hispanic Cultural Studies programs.
An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Scott is a former fellow of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center who helped launch UC San Diego’s Spanish Civil War Memory Project, a groundbreaking digital humanities project and the world’s largest audiovisual archive of survivor testimony from the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship, for which he conducted more than 50 interviews over a period of three years. While collaborating with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory he also worked on multiple mass grave exhumations and conducted archival research that formed part of the evidence compiled for Judge Baltasar Garzón’s historic investigation of Francoist crimes.
Scott’s book project, Spanish Nightmares: Cultural Anxieties & Horror Film in 21st Century Spain (Toronto Iberic/University of Toronto Press) examines the Spanish Horror Renaissance (2000-20) in relation to the traumatic legacy of the Francoist dictatorship and the cultural shocks provoked by the Great Recession, while offering an ideological critique of the so-called Spanish transition to democracy through the allegorical gaze of cinematic horror. He has published academic articles and book chapters on contemporary Spanish horror film and neo-noir, popular theater, the politics of historical memory and museum studies, as well as journalistic essays, feature articles and film reviews. He teaches courses on Spanish cinema, literature and cultural studies, as well as genocide, transitional justice and documentary film within a comparative global studies framework.
Degree: Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
Research Interests: 20th/21st Spanish Cinema & Cultural Studies; Spanish Civil War, Francoist Dictatorship & the Transition; Historical Memory; Economic & Ecological Crisis; Social Movements; Psychoanalysis; Trauma Studies; Memory Studies; Genocide Studies; Documentary Film
Projects
Spanish Nightmares: Cultural Anxieties & Horror Film in 21st Century Spain, Toronto Iberic, University of Toronto Press (Forthcoming)
“Cinema of Dissensus: Cultural Crisis and the (Re)Emergence of Spanish Neo-Noir” in Crime & Crisis in Transatlantic Literature & Visual Culture, Diana Aramburu & Nick Phillips (Eds.), Hispanic Issues, Vanderbilt University Press (Forthcoming)
“The Politics of Public Memory in Madrid Now: From an ‘Olympic Capital of Impunity’ to Omnia sunt communia,” in Cartographies of Madrid: Contesting Urban Space at the Crossroads of the Global South and Global North, Silvia Bermúdez & Anthony Geist (Eds.)
“Popular Theater as Space and Symbol of the Spanish Democratic Revolution,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 95:10 (2018)
“Caníbal,” “El desconocido,” “Grupo 7,” “¿Qué hace una chica como tú en un sitio como este?,” “Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto,” in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Film, Alex Pinar & Salvador Jimenez Murguia (Eds.), Rowman & Littlefie
“Aparecidos, or How to Make the Ghosts Haunting You Disappear by Seeing Others” in Historia, literatura y arte en el cine en español y portugués (Ed. María Marcos Ramos) Centro de Estudios Brasileños, Universidad de Salamanca (2017)
“Por una memoria activa” in Políticas de memoria y construcción de ciudadanía, Ariel Jerez and Emilio Silva (Eds.), Postmetropolis Editorial(2015)
“Specters of Genocide: Mass Graves, Horror Film and Impunity in Post-dictatorship Spain” in The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Essays on Trauma, History and Memory, Michael O’Loughlin (Ed.), Rowman & Littlefield (2014)
Spain 2015: The Year of Change? (Anticipated release in 2025)
Writer, Cinematographer, Director & Producer – This feature film examines the legacy of the historic municipal and national elections held in Spain in May and December of 2015, respectively, from the vantage point of a decade later. The completed film will interweave and juxtapose footage and interviews with a variety of Spanish political actors, cultural figures and citizens recorded during those electoral campaigns with new footage and interviews to be recorded in 2024. (Filming 70% complete)
Walking For Ded: A Short Film About Sanctuary (2019)
Writer, Director & Co-Producer – Knight Foundation Award for Best Documentary (Cinetopia Film Festival – Detroit Voices Competition); Best Documentary (Wolf Tree Short Film Festival)
What Happens To A Dream Deferred: A Short Film About DACA (2018)
Writer, Director & Co-Producer – Best Director, Short Documentary (Indie & Foreign Film Festival); Best Short Documentary (Oklahoma Cine Latino Film Festival); Advocacy in Latino Film Award (Tulipanes Latino Art & Film Festival); Best Michigan Frontrunner Award (Capital City Film Festival); LOLA Award Honorable Mention (Philadelphia Latino Film Festival)
Courses
SPN 830: Spanish Nightmares: Horror Film, Historical Trauma & Allegorical Realism
SPN 830: Crisis & Culture: Representations of the Spanish Economic Crisis
SPN 830: Postdictatorship Spanish Cinema
SPN 830: Contemporary Spanish Literature
SPN 491: Spanish Im/migration Cinema
SPN 491: Ghosts, Cannibals & Crime: Spanish Popular Cinema in a Time of Crisis
SPN 491: Spanish Horror Film
SPN 420: Spain & Its Literature
SPN 412: Crisis & Culture: Representations of the Spanish Economic Crisis
SPN 342: Media & Conversation
GSAH 310: Genocide, Transitional Justice & Documentary Film
GSAH 310: The Spanish Civil War as Global Conflict
GSAH 220: The Hispanic Atlantic
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