Rimgaila Salys (Rima Salys) is Professor Emerita of Russian Program at the University of Colorado Boulder an expert in 20th century Russian literature, film, and culture. Her research interests include Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, 20th century Russian art and culture, theory and praxis of literary modernism, and Soviet cinematic musical. Of note is her research in the history of the Patterson family of black expatriates in the Soviet Union, which included James Patterson, who played the black baby boy in the famous soviet musical Circus.