Stephenie Young

Professor Stephenie Young is a writer, scholar, and curator of visual culture, working at the intersection of comparative literature, photography, and the ethics of witnessing. She teaches in the English Department at Salem State University and serves as Senior Faculty Research Fellow at the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where her work engages questions of memory, testimony, and the visual life of human rights.

She came to comparative literature through art history and translation, completing her Ph.D. at SUNY Binghamton, where she studied visual art, performance, and experimental writing as forms of testimony under dictatorship in Chile. That early attention to fractured languages continues to shape her thinking across regions and archives, from Latin America to the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Georgia, and the United States.

Her current writing turns to photography and its uneasy claim to truth. She is interested in what happens when the photograph is asked to serve as evidence: what it reveals, what it cannot hold, and what it risks erasing. Working with the work of Diana Matar, Yael Martínez, Ziyah Gafi?, and Fatma Bucak, she follows images into sites of violence, disappearance, and aftermath, asking how visual form carries—without resolving—the burden of witnessing.

Alongside this project, she is developing a hybrid memoir in essays, a book structured as a series of encounters between writing and painting, literature and memory. These essays focus on thinking through looking.

Her recent publication includes “Object Lessons: Art and Forensics from Former Yugoslavia,” in Objects of Atrocity: Material Culture and the Challenges of Difficult Histories (Purdue University Press, 2026).

Her work has been supported by the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the Government of Spain, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the City of Cambridge, and the Salem State University Center for Research and Creative Activities.

She is also a curator of contemporary photography and painting, organizing exhibitions that move between archive and present tense. These include Disappearing Worlds at Bridge Gallery in Cambridge, featuring Evgenia Arbugaeva and Natela Grigalashvili, and Revere Beach Stories, a collaborative project of poetry and photographs shown at Salem State University, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Revere Historical Museum.

She serves as a subject matter expert on evidence and forensics for The Holocaust Museum Boston (opening 2026/27), sits on the board of KUMA in Sarajevo, and advises the Bridge Photography Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2026, she received a seed and travel grant from the SSU Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies to support ongoing research in Mexico on photography, evidence, and ethics.

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

"Object Lessons: Art and Forensics from Former Yugoslavia,’” in Objects of Atrocity: Material Culture and the Challenges of Difficult Histories. Eds. Robert M. Ehrenreich, Jane Klinger, Gabriel Pizzorno, and Caroline Sturdy Colls. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 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/. The piece was subsequently recirculated as part of an exhibition at Novembar Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia (May 18–June 30, 2024).

"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