Professional Background
Dr. Szűcs holds a PhD in aesthetics from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, where she has served as an assistant professor. She has also lectured at Corvinus University. Dr. Szűcs is the author of A felejtés története – A holokauszt tanúsága irodalmi művekben (The History of Forgetting – The Witness of the Holocaust in Literary Works), as well as co-editor and contributor to Zsidó identitásképek a huszadik századi magyar irodalomban (Representations of Jewish Identities in Twentieth-Century Hungarian Literature), and has numerous other scholarly publications.
Her research focuses on the role of literature and the arts in Holocaust and Genocide studies and in critical Romani studies, with a particular emphasis on the literature of the Romani Holocaust. Her additional fields of interest include memory studies, queer theory, and health humanities.
Dr. Szűcs was a co-curator of the Visual Art Section of RomArchive – Digital Archive of the Roma, and of the exhibition “Collectively Carried Out” at the Budapest History Museum – OFF-Biennale Budapest. She has received grants from the Rothschild Foundation and the City University of New York.
In addition to her academic work, Dr. Szűcs is a writer. Her autobiographical novel on dementia home care, Visszatért hozzám az emlékezet (My Memory Came Back to Me), was awarded the Déry Prize for prose and the Artisjus Literary Prize.
Fellowship Research
While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Joyce and Arthur Schechter Fellow, Teri Szűcs will conduct research for her project “Hungarian Romani Holocaust Literature: Memory, Representation, Contexts.” She will explore how the Romani Holocaust has been remembered, represented, and conceptualized by writers who have played a vital role in establishing and expanding Romani arts and historiography in the Hungarian context. This rich and varied literary corpus enables an examination of both the specificities of the Romani experience of the Holocaust and its interconnections with Jewish history, as well as with broader historical narratives of persecution and othering affecting European Roma. The project also highlights the distinctive role of Romani art in the transnational human rights struggle for the political recognition and visibility of Europe’s Roma communities. By analyzing how Romani writers employ narrative, memory, and cultural symbolism to represent collective cataclysms, the research contributes to a more comprehensive and evolving understanding of Holocaust literature.
Dr. Szűcs will utilize the Museum’s archival collections and survivor testimonies related to the Hungarian chapter of the Holocaust with the aim of bridging the gap between literary representation and historical documentation.
Residency Period: January 1, 2027 – April 30, 2027