She Animates: Gendered Soviet and Russian Animation

She Animates examines the work of twelve female animation directors in the Soviet Union and Russia, who have long been overlooked by film scholars and historians. 

Our approach examines these directors within history, culture, and industrial practice in animation. In addition to making a case for including these women and their work in the annals of film and animation history, this volume also makes an argument for why their work should be considered part of the tradition of women’s cinema. 

We offer textual analysis that focuses on the changing attitudes towards both the woman question and feminism by examining the films in light of the emergence and evolution of a Soviet female subjectivity that still informs women’s cinema in Russia today.

Lora Mjolsness is a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine and the Director of Program in Russian Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Slavic Languages and Literatures She teaches interdisciplinary courses on Russian and Soviet Cinema and on Soviet Animation.

Michele Leigh received her PhD in Critical Studies from the School of Cinematic Arts at USC in 2008. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Her research interests include silent cinema, Russian and Eastern European Cinema, and female industrial practice.