Sanna Stegmaier (Honorable Mention)
Center Graduate Research Fellowship
2018-2019

Sanna Stegmaier is a second-year joint PhD student in German Studies and Cultural Studies at King’s College, London and Humboldt University, Berlin. She earned her B.A. in Theatre, Film and Media Studies from the University of Vienna, Austria and her M.A. in Comparative Literature from the same university. Her research interests include Holocaust and genocide studies, memory and trauma studies and 20th century Austrian, German and U.S. literature and culture. Her publications include “From the Posttraumatic to the Posttestimonial  Doron Rabinovici’s Die letzten Zeugen (2013) between Discursive and Emotive Holocaust Memory” (2018) and “The Shadow of the Falling Man as an End of (Im)mediate Trauma” (2013). 

During her time at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Stegmaier researched the ways in which “contemporary witness projects…[function] as agents of transnational and transgenerational Holocaust memory in the digital age.” She aimed to conceptualize projects such as Dimensions in Testimony, which she calls posttestimony, as original, self-reflective forms of engagement that pose new ethical questions for the field of memory studies and Holocaust education. Stegmaier’s research at the Center was used as the basis for the third chapter of her dissertation, tentatively titled Posttestimonial Holocaust Memory between the Discursive and the Emotive – A Case study of European and US Witness Projects in the Digital Age.