Yuliya V. Ladygina
Jacyk Distinguished Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
September - December 2026
Supported by HURI with the Petro Jacyk Endowment Fund
Research Projects
The Reel Story of Russia’s War against Ukraine
During her fellowship, Dr. Ladygina will continue work on her book manuscript, Screens of Defiance: The Reel Story of Russia’s War against Ukraine, a study of how Ukrainian filmmakers have interpreted and challenged Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014. The project argues that contemporary Ukrainian war cinema rethinks the war-film genre by exposing the hybrid nature of modern warfare, where military violence is intertwined with information warfare, propaganda, and the politics of historical memory. Drawing on approaches from film and media studies, memory studies, and political history, the book examines documentary and feature films produced in response to the Euromaidan Revolution, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Donbas War, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It demonstrates how Ukrainian filmmakers revise the legacies of Soviet, European, and American war cinema while revealing how media shape understandings of war, national identity, and political agency. The project also explores how cinema has become a battleground where competing narratives of history and the ongoing wartime are contested. Organized around four major phases of Ukraine’s recent history, the book analyzes work by a diverse generation of Ukrainian filmmakers, including Nariman Aliev, Roman Bondarchuk, Mstyslav Chernov, Alina Gorlova, Oksana Karpovych, Alina Kovalenko, Roman Liubyi, Sergei Loznitsa, Maryna Er Gorbach, Akhtem Seitablaiev, Iryna Tsilyk, Valentyn Vasianovych, and Natalka Vorozhbyt. By situating Ukrainian cinema within broader debates about memory, decolonization, hybrid warfare, and visual culture, the project offers the first comprehensive English-language study of contemporary Ukrainian war cinema and its global significance.
Biography
Yuliya V. Ladygina is Associate Professor of Slavic and Global and International Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on Eastern European literatures and cultures, with particular emphasis on cultural memory, transnational exchange, and the intersections of literature, film, and politics. She is the author of Bridging East and West: Ol’ha Kobylians’ka, Ukraine’s Pioneering Modernist (University of Toronto Press, 2019). Currently, she is completing her second book project, Screens of Defiance: The Reel Story of Russia’s War against Ukraine, which examines how Ukrainian filmmakers have documented, interpreted, and challenged Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014, revealing how contemporary conflicts are fought not only on the battlefield but also through media, memory, and competing narratives of history and identity. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, East European Jewish Affairs, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of War and Culture Studies, Slavic Review, KinoKultura, Studies in World Cinema, and Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture.