Sharon Zelnick is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of comparative literature at the University of California Los Angeles. She is interested in memory and migration, public humanities, media studies, Jewish studies, contemporary literature and critical university studies. She has taught courses and published peer reviewed articles on intergenerational memory, migrant aesthetics and visual-verbal relations. Her research has been supported by the DAAD, GRM, DYA, Berger Fellowship in Holocaust Studies, and Sharon Abramson  Research Grant. Her dissertation “Shoah Shadows: Israeli Migrants Aesthetic Interventions in Germany” examines literary and media projects created by third generation descendants who have moved to Berlin. She argues that the shadows of the Shoah that occupy the physical and cultural spaces of Berlin, as well as the pervasive duty to remember in both Germany and Israel, evoke a deep form of responsible remembering: simultaneously commemorating the past with care and focusing on creating a more ethical present and future.

Education

  • B.A., Tel Aviv University, 2016
  • M.A., Leiden University, 2018

Research

  • (Post)memory in literary and artistic works across Palestinian-Israeli-German contexts
  • Intergenerational memory and migration
  • Photography-embedded migrant literature
  • Jewish American Literature

Publications

Articles

Field of Interest

Memory and Migration, Public Humanities, Media Studies, Jewish Studies, Contemporary Literature, Critical University Studies, Palestine/Israel Studies, and Trauma Studies

Languages

English, Hebrew, German

Teaching

  • Winter 2024, Holocaust Literature, Seminar Instructor
  • Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz: Institute for Film, Theater, Media and Cultural Studies
      • Winter 2022-2023, “Jewish Multimedia Migrant Narratives,” Seminar Instructor
  • University of California, Los Angeles
      • Spring 2022, “Reading and Visualizing Postmemories of the Holocaust and the Nakba,” Seminar Instructor
      • Fall 2021 and Winter 2022, “Political Violence in the Modern World,” Teaching Associate
      • Spring 2021, “Great Books from the World at Large,” Teaching Assistant
      • Fall 2020 & Winter 2021, “Literature from The Age of Enlightenment to the 20th Century,” Teaching Assistant
      • Fall 2019, “Modern Hebrew Literature Made into Films,” Reader
  • Leiden University
      • Fall 2017, “Introduction to Gender Studies,” Reader

Conferences and Invited Lectures

  • “Visualizing Intergenerational Holocaust Remembrance” at the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin, May 2025
  • “Shoah Shadows” at the “Geschichtsbewusstsein und Solidarität: Die dritte Nachkriegsgeneration zwischen Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft” Symposium at the Freie Universität Berlin, July 2025
  • “Anthologies Against the Grain” at the Entangled Otherings: Muslim and Jewish Relations after October 7th Conference at Cambridge University, July 2024
  • “Israeli Migrants Intergenerational Dialogues with German-Jewish Thinkers” at the American Comparative Literature Associations Annual Conference, March 2024
  • “Recuperation and Return in the Work of Philip Roth and Yael Bartana” at the Memory Studies Association Annual Meeting, The University of Warwick, July 2023
  • “The Photo/Text as a Medium of Jewish-American Memory” at the Ben Lerner Paris Conference, the University of Chicago Center in Paris, June 2023
  • “Reading Mizrahi Israeli Multilingual Poetics in Germany as Protest” at the World Congress of Jewish Studies Annual Conference, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, August 2022
  • “Migratory Reimaginations in Germany: Benyamin Reich’s Postmemorial Holocaust Photographs.” at the Mnemonics Summer School, Aarhus University, August 2021.
  • “Holocaust Postmemories and Occupation Hauntings in Dani Gal’s White City” at the Geaneologies of Memory Annual Conference, European Network for Remembrance and Solidarity, November 2020.
  • “Intersectional Resistance in Shirin Neshat’s I Will Greet the Sun Again” at the Memory and Political Responsibility Conference, UCLA, February 2020.
  • “Shifting Narratives in Contemporary Photo-Embedded Migrant Fiction” at the International Conference on Narrative, McGill University, April 2018.
  • “Visualizing Histories of Injustice: Photography in Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants” at the ACLA Annual Meeting, UCLA, March 2018.
  • “Photography as Political Resistance: Protest and Play in Dow Wasiksiri and Manit Sriwanichpoom” at the Platform for Postcolonial Readings Annual Meeting, University of Amsterdam, January 2018.“The Ethics of Visual Representation: Women Refugees in Ad van Denderen’s Go No Go” at NOG (Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies) Graduate Student Conference, Utrecht University, May 2017.