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 earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton, where my doctoral dissertation investigated visual art, performance, and experimental writing as forms of testimony on human rights under dictatorship in Chile. I also hold graduate certificates in French–English and Spanish–English translation from SUNY Binghamton and a B.A. in Art History from California State University, Long Beach.

My research addresses how literature and visual art shape cultural memory and engage questions of human rights, trauma, forensic evidence, and transitional justice. I studied photography and continue to use it as both a research method and a creative practice, which informs my teaching, curatorial projects, and scholarship. I have published on artists and writers working across diverse regional contexts, including the United States, Latin America, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Georgia.

One of my current projects explores the relationship between photography, evidence, and ethics. Tracing the photograph’s long-standing claim to “proof,” it interrogates both the authority and the limits of visual testimony in contexts of political violence. Drawing on the work of Diana Matar (post-Gaddafi Libya and sites of police violence in the United States), Yael Martínez (drug wars in Mexico), Ziyah Gafi? (Srebrenica mass graves), and Fatma Bucak (state violence in Turkish Kurdistan), the project considers what it means to see, witness, and substantiate in the face of atrocity.

Recent publications include “The Reluctant Screen Shot Collector,” co-authored with artist Vladimir Miladinovi? and published in the Journal of Visual Culture in collaboration with the Harun Farocki Institute (London). The piece was subsequently recirculated as part of an exhibition at Novembar Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia (May 18–June 30, 2024). Forthcoming is “Rendered Absence: An Afterlife through Art for Batajnica’s ‘Free Objects,’” to appear in winter 2026 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 received competitive support from the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation; the Spanish government; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Salem State University Center for Research and Creative Activities; and the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In addition to my scholarly work, I curate visual art with a focus on painting and photography. In 2019, I co-organized a workshop and exhibition on war and memory in Georgia, held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 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 funding from the City of Cambridge. An interview about the exhibition is available through the World Peace Foundation.

I currently serve as a subject matter expert on evidence and forensics for The 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, where I designed an educational program on post-conflict visual arts for a group of advanced international graduate students participating in its summer school.

As of spring 2026, I have joined the faculty at the International Center of Photography in New York, offering a course on photography and human rights. I also serve on the advisory board of the Bridge Photography Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I provide expertise on global conflict photography.

I recently received a grant from the Salem State University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies to support my research and writing on photography, evidence, and ethics in Mexico City in summer 2026.

• Comparative Literature
• Memory and Trauma
• Ethics, Human Rights, and Photography
• Literature and Art of the Americas
• Transitional Justice
• The U.S.–Mexican Border in Visual Culture
• Forensics, Aesthetics, and Evidence
• Post-Conflict Artistic and Literary Narratives of the Former Yugoslavia

At Salem State University, I hold multiple academic and administrative roles. I serve as Program Coordinator for the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Graduate Certificate Program and as a Senior Faculty Research Fellow at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. I am Chair of the University Research and Creative Activities Committee (2023–26) and Chair of the English Department Publicity Committee (2025–26). I have been a member of the English Graduate Faculty since 2008 and the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Graduate Faculty since 2010. Additionally, I serve on the Executive Committee of the 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 2026. 

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, walking long distances in the mountains, skiing, reading, film, leaning new languages