Dr. Marina Balina

Marina Balina is Isaac Funk Professor Emerita of Russian Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University. She is editor and co-editor of 11 volumes, including Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (with Larissa Rudova, 2008), Constructing Childhood: Literature, History, Anthropology (2011), To Kill Charskaia: Politics and Aesthetics in Soviet Children’s Literature of the 1920s and 1930s (2014), and Hans Christian Andersen and Russia (2020). She  has published widely on historical and theoretical aspects of the 20^th - century Russian children’s literature. From 2014 through 2017 she has served as a chair of the International Committee of ChLA. Dr. Balina is the founding member of the Working Group for Study of Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (currently Childhood in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia) that unites scholars dedicated to study and promotion of children’s literature of the former Eastern Bloc.