Raymond De Luca

Raymond De Luca is a Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures with a secondary field certification in Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) at Harvard University. His dissertation is tentatively titled “The Lives and Deaths of Animals in Soviet Cinema, 1917-1991.” Mobilizing Russian cultural criticism, film theory, environmental history, philosophy, and the emerging field of animal studies, this dissertation examines not how animals are “represented” but how animals are made present again onscreen in ways that account for the ever-fluid attitudes and treatment toward animals in Soviet culture. Foregrounded, often violently, by directors who had their own lives blighted by an authoritarian state, Soviet film animals register the pressures eroding the conditions of life for all living beings. They invite renewed appreciation for humans’ mutuality with animals as beings susceptible to ruthless power. Raymond’s writings on film have been published in Canadian Journal of Film Studies, KinoKultura, Slavic and East European Journal, and Film Criticism. Concurrent with his dissertation, he is working on a project about insects in early stop-motion animation. Raymond received his B.A. in history from Haverford College in 2014 and an M.A. in Russian Studies from Middlebury College in 2018; he also won a Fulbright Scholarship to Russia for the 2014-2015 academic year.