Stephenie Young

Academic Biography:

A professor of Comparative Literature in the English Department and Senior Faculty Research Associate for the SSU Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, I joined the faculty of Salem State in fall of 2008. I completed my M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the State University of New York, Binghamton and earned my B.A. in Art History from California State University, Long Beach. I hold two Graduate certificates in translation from SUNY Binghamton: French to English and Spanish to English. I am also a photographer and I use this practice in many professional and personal projects. 

My academic research focuses on my combined interests in art, writing, trauma and memory in modern conflict and post-conflict regions, mainly in Eastern Europe/the former U.S.S.R., and the southern cone of Latin America. I have published extensively on topics related to former Yugoslavia, but my interests extend far beyond those regional borders. In much of my work I focus on how traumatic material culture, often considered evidence in legal and social terms, is used to create visual narratives that shape memory politics, especially since 1990. My current book project, The Forensics of Memorialization, focuses on how the "forensic imagination," the intersection of forensics and ethics, is used as a way to construct memory in post-conflict former Yugoslavia and several other contemporary regions affected by war and mass violence. 

I have received substantial support for my research throughout my career including a grant from the US Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Marion and Jasper Whiting Grant, a Mobility Grant from the Spanish government, several fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, research grants from the Salem State University Center for Research and Creative Activities, and others.   

Recent publications include an essay about the meme and fake news with artist Vladimir Miladinovic, "The Reluctant Screen Shot Collector," for the Journal of Visual Culture and Harun Farocki Institute in London, and the book chapter, “Bodies of Evidence: Memory, Forensics, and ‘Documentary’ Literature about former Yugoslavia” in After Memory: Rethinking Representations of World War II in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures. I also have an essay about the work of Serbian artist Vladimir Miladinovic forthcoming in the collection entitled Material Culture of Difficult Histories, to be published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (fall 2024). 

Last fall, I co-curated a photography exhibit "Disappearing Worlds," at Bridge Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts (October 2023). It highlighted the work of two contemporary female photographers from the former Soviet Union, Evgenia Arbugaeva (Siberia) and Natela Grigalashvili (Georgia). This exhibit was made possible with a grant from the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I am currently working on several other projects including a collection of short stories, a grant-funded photography exhibit on Revere Beach using my photographs and the work of two local poets, Kevin Carey and Jen Martelli, and a grant-funded photography/writing project about the ever-shifting borders of the nation state of Georgia. 

Comparative Literature 

Critical Theory: Memory and Trauma

Visual Culture Studies 

Memoir/Autobiography/Diary Writing 

Forensics and Evidence (former Yugoslavia)

Literature of the Americas

Border Studies

Modern Italian Literature

Senior Faculty Research Associate, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

English; Holocaust and Genocide Studies Graduate Faculty

University Research and Creative Activities Committee (2023-24)

Member of the HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution) Planning Committee (ongoing)

Recent 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 2023. 

"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.

Invited Speaker: "Source Material: An Aesthetics of Absence." University of Regensburg, and 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. 

Walking in high places; Travel; Photography; Learning Italian