Jessica Young is currently an Assistant Professor of Global English at New College of Florida. Her dissertation, “Migrating Memories: Power and Transcultural Memory in Contemporary South Asian Fiction,” traces the visible and invisible modes of memory transmission across national and cultural borders in South Asian literature produced in the United States, England, Canada, and the subcontinent. She is currently working on a second research project that examines memories of gentrification and anti-gentrification activism from multiple global contexts.
While at the University of Illinois, Jessica co-founded the Future of Trauma and Memory Studies reading group and co-edited Days and Memory, the blog of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. This foundation in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies deeply informs Jessica’s interdisciplinary approach to research and teaching World Literature, where she focuses on issues surrounding colonialism, indigeneity, genocide, state violence, commemoration, and restorative justice from multiple global contexts. Jessica received her B.A. from Reed College and her M.A. from San Francisco State University, both in English. Jessica earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in English with a graduate certificate in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, during which time she was awarded the Graduate College’s Illinois Distinguished Fellowship, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Fellowship, the Gendell and Shiner Family Fellowship, and was a Visiting Graduate Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.