Stephenie Young

I am Professor of Comparative Literature in the English Department at Salem State University (SSU) and Senior Faculty Research Fellow at the SSU Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. I joined the faculty of Salem State University in fall 2008. I completed my M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton. My doctoral dissertation examined visual art, performance, and experimental writing as forms of testimony on human rights under dictatorship in Chile. I also hold two graduate certificates in translation (French–English and Spanish–English) from SUNY Binghamton and earned my B.A. in Art History from California State University, Long Beach.

My research examines how literature and visual art shape cultural memory and engage questions of human rights, trauma, forensic evidence, and transitional justice. I have published on artists and writers working in diverse regional contexts, including Mexico, the Southern Cone of Latin America, the former Yugoslavia, and the nation of Georgia.

My current book project is a collection of essays on evidence, trauma, and memory in the history of photography. Tracing photography from its nineteenth-century origins to the present, the project explores the photograph as “proof” and interrogates the ethics of looking—the role of the artist as observer and the possibilities and limits of observation—during and after political uprisings, mass violence, and, more recently, ecological crisis. Rather than focusing on a single geographic site, the book draws on images across time and space. Case studies include Diana Matar’s photography in post-Gaddafi Libya, which complicates notions of proof in the face of absence; Ziyah Gafi?’s documentation of objects recovered from the mass graves of Srebrenica, which underscores the evidentiary power of material remnants; and Fatma Bucak’s installation work on state-sanctioned violence in contemporary Turkish Kurdistan, which seeks to create an aesthetics of loss through contemplative representation and what the artist terms “slow thought.”

My recent publications include “The Reluctant Screen Shot Collector,” an essay on memes and fake news co-authored with artist Vladimir Miladinovi? and published in the Journal of Visual Culture in collaboration with the Harun Farocki Institute (London). The essay was subsequently recirculated as part of an exhibition at Novembar Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia (May 18–June 30, 2024). I also have a forthcoming essay, “Rendered Absence: An Afterlife through Art for Batajnica’s ‘Free Objects,’” to appear in winter 2025 in the edited volume Material Culture of Difficult Histories, edited by Robert M. Ehrenreich, Jane Klinger, Gabriel Pizzorno, and Caroline Sturdy Colls.

My research has been supported by a range of competitive grants and fellowships, including funding from the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina; a Marion and Jasper Whiting Grant; a Mobility Grant from the Spanish government; multiple fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; research grants from the Salem State University Center for Research and Creative Activities; and funding from the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In addition to my scholarly work, I am an active curator of visual art, with a focus on painting and photography. In 2019, I co-curated a workshop and painting exhibition on war and memory in contemporary Georgia. In fall 2023, I co-curated Disappearing Worlds, a photography exhibition at Bridge Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, featuring the work of contemporary women photographers Evgenia Arbugaeva (Siberia) and Natela Grigalashvili (Georgia). The exhibition was supported by a grant from the City of Cambridge. An interview about the exhibition with Dr. Bridget Conley of the Tufts University Fletcher School is available through the World Peace Foundation.

I have also served as a subject matter expert on evidence and forensics for Holocaust Museum Boston, scheduled to open in winter 2026/27.

In summer 2025, I worked in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a program curator with the global non-profit organization KUMA. In collaboration with director Claudia Zini, I designed an educational program on post-conflict visual arts for KUMA’s week-long international summer school for advanced studies.

As of spring 2026 I am a faculty member of the International Center of Photography in NYC where I teach a course on human rights and photography. I am on also on the advisory board of the Bridge Photography Gallery in Cambridge Massachusetts where I serve as an expert on global conflict photography. 

Comparative Literature 

Memory and Trauma

Ethics, Human Rights, Photography

Literature and Art of the Americas 

Transitional Justice

The U.S./Mexican Border in Visual Culture

Forensics, Aesthetics, Evidence

Post-Conflict Artistic and Literary Narratives of Former Yugoslavia

My responsibilities at SSU include:

Program Coordinator, SSU Holocaust and Genocide Studies Graduate Certificate Program

Senior Faculty Research Fellow, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Chair, University Research and Creative Activities Committee (2023-26)

Chair, English Department Publicity Committee (2025-26)

English Graduate Faculty (2008-present)

Holocaust and Genocide Studies Graduate Faculty (2010-present)

Executive Committee Member, SSU Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2013-present)

Selected Publications

"Rendered Absence: An Afterlife through Art for Batajnica's 'Free Objects'. " To be published in the volume entitled: Material Culture of Difficult Histories. Eds. Robert M. Ehrenreich, Jane Klinger, Gabriel Pizzorno, and Caroline Sturdy Colls. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Forthcoming 2025. 

Revere Beach Stories. Photography and poetry. Collaboration with poets Kevin Carey and Jennifer Martelli. Chatham, Massachusetts: Red Nun Press, 2025. finalist for the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, selected by Matthew Henry and the New England Poetry Club.

"Boundary-Aesthetics: Obscured Scenographies of Violence at the U.S./Mexican Border." Performing Human Rights: Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practices in the Global South. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. 2021.

“Bodies of Evidence: Memory, Forensics, and ‘Documentary’ Literature about former Yugoslavia.” After Memory: Rethinking Representations of World War II in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures. Eds. Matthias Schwartz, Nina Weller, and Heike Winkel. Media and Cultural Memory Series. De Gruyter Publishers. 2021.

"The Reluctant Screen Shot Collector." With Vladimir Miladinovic. London: Journal of Visual Culture and Harun Farocki Institute. 2020. https://www.harun-farocki-institut.org/de/2020/09/30/the-reluctant-screen-shot-collector-journal-of-visual-culture-hafi-44/. 

"In Stalin’s Cave: Art as Testimony to the Disputed Borders of Contemporary Georgia." In Getuigen tussen geschiedenis en herinnering – (Testimony between history and memory). International peer-reviewed journal of the Auschwitz Foundation, Brussels. April 2019.

"Geographies of Loss: Testimony, Art and the Afterlife of Batajnica's Disappeared Objects." In Getuigen tussen geschiedenis en herinnering – nr. 126 (Testimony between history and memory), number 126. International peer-reviewed journal of the Auschwitz Foundation, Brussels. April 2018.

"A 'Living Memorial': Forensic Imaginings from the Inside of a Bosnian Mortuary Fridge." Cahiers SIRICE (online journal of the SIRICE laboratory--a common research team of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris 4 Sorbonne and the CNRS - www.sirice.fr). November 2017.

"The Forensic Imagination: Evidence, Art and the Post-Yugoslav Document." In Mapping the “Forensic Turn”: Engagements with Materialities of Mass Death in Holocaust Studies and Beyond. Vienna: New Academic Press. October 2017. 

Review: Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider, Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era: The Ethics of Never Again. In Getuigen tussen geschiedenis en herinnering – nr. 125 (Testimony between history and memory, number 125. International peer-reviewed journal of the Auschwitz Foundation, Brussels). October 2017.

"Performative Memory-Making and the Future of the Kestenberg Archive" in Understanding the Kestenberg Child Survivor Testimony Collection: Historical, Linguistic and Psychological Approaches. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Press. March 2017. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/FogelmanChildren

Review: Margarita Saona's Memory Matters in Transitional Peru in Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. Vol. 6: Iss. 11, Article 8. October 2016. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/dissidences/vol6/iss11/19/

Review: Roberto Bolaño’s A Little Lumpen Novelita in Asymptote http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Criticism&id=83&curr_index=0  January 2015.

Selected Speaking Engagements:

Invited Panelist: Talk Back, Mad Forest. A play about the Romanian Revolution. SSU Sophia Gordon Center. November 2025. 

Moderator, "Asking the Fire Department for the Key in Pforzheim, Germany."  with Dr. Alexandria Peary. Salem State University, CHGS, October 2025. 

Moderator, "The Presidents and the People: A Conversation with Dr. Corey Brettschneider." Salem State University, CHGS, September 2025. 

Invited Event Curator: KUMA International Summer School Workshop on Post-Conflict Visual Arts. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. June-July 2025. 

Invited Speaker: "Introduction to Memory Studies in the Visual Arts." KUMA International Summer School Workshop on Post-Conflict Visual Arts. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. July 2025.

Invited Speaker: "The Forensic Turn: Art, Memory and the Case of Srebrenica." KUMA International Summer School Workshop on Post-Conflict Visual Arts. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. June 2025.

Group Presentation with Kevin Carey and Jennifer Martelli, "Revere Beach Stories." Winfisky Gallery, Salem State University. February 2025.

Interviewer. "Art, Memory, and Reconciliation: The Mission of Kuma International in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Dr. Claudia Zini." Salem State University. January 2025.

Invited Speaker: "Source Material: An Aesthetics of Absence." University of Regensburg. Part of the workshop, "Memory, Archives and Cultural Production in Contemporary Lebanon and Iraq." January 2024. 

Invited Speaker: "Revisiting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: A Conversation with Playwright Darrah Teitel." Network for Social Justice. January 2023. Online.

Moderator: "The War in Ukraine." Alisa Sopova and Vladimir Petrovic. November 2022. Online.

Moderator: "Picturing Hidden Stories: A Discussion with Renee Billingslea." February 2021. Online. 

Invited Speaker. "Talkback: The Ringelblum Archive. Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center." Manhattan College. October 2020. Online.  

Invited Presenter, “Worthy of a Postcard? Borders, Memory, and Visual Autobiographies.” Arts and Conflict: Contesting the Unavailability of Cultural Heritage. Virtual Workshop. University of Zurich. October 2020.

Invited Guest Speaker, "In Stalin’s Cave: Art as Testimony to the Disputed Borders of Contemporary Georgia." Academic Seminar Guest Speaker. Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw Poland. December 2019.

Curator, "Gates: Post-Conflict Paintings from Georgia." Artist Giorgi Ugulava, Academy of Fine Arts, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Exhibition sponsored by  a cultural grant from the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. July 2019.

Invited Guest Speaker, "New Findings--The Forensic Turn: Art and Aesthetics in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina." KUMA International Summer School on Contemporary Art from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. July 2019. 

Invited Seminar Speaker, "Boundary-Aesthetics: Obscured Scenographies of Violence." Remains, Ruins, Landscapes http://dissonantnarratives.ch/event/autumn-workshop-remains-ruins-landscapes/. University of Zurich. October 2018. 

Invited Symposium Speaker and Workshop Participant, "Material Culture and the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. October 2018. https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/MCHMATCULTHOL1018 

Invited Guest Speaker, "The Forensic Turn: Art and Aesthetics in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina." KUMA International Summer School on Contemporary Art from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. June 2018. http://kumainternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/kuma-summer-school-program-2.pdf

Invited Speaker, "Border Trash: Displaced Objects from the Open Graves of Latin America." The Forensic Imagination Symposium at University of the Arts, London. March 2017. http://events.arts.ac.uk/event/2017/3/15/The-Forensic-Imagination-symposium/

Presenter, "From Object to Artifact: Forensics, Memorialization and the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center."  At POLIN's conference, Museums and Their Publics at Sites of Conflicted History. Warsaw, Poland. March 2017. 
www.polin.pl/sites/default/files/museums_and_their_publics_v.28.02.2017_0.pdf

Keynote Speaker, "Curating Forensics: Displaced Objects from the Holocaust and Latin America." Landscapes of Displacement: Borderlands in Comparative Perspective. San Diego Mesa College. Co-sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. September 2016. 

travel, photography