Conference and Local Campus Presentations
Co-organizer and speaker, "Transnational Memories: Sites, Knots, Methods," MLA Convention, January 11, 2015.
“Between Optimism and Pessimism: Conflict, Racialization, and Hope,” Panel on Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, American Academy of Religion, Nov. 20, 2011.
“Multidirectional Memory and the German Question,” with Yasemin Yildiz. “Bringing History and Migration into the Equation,” Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany, October 6, 2011.
Response to Leslie A. Adelson’s Keynote Lecture, “Singularity: Diffracted Memories in Transnational Literature,” Utrecht University, June 24, 2011.
“Thinking about the Holocaust in Comparative Contexts,” Sinai Temple, Champaign, IL, April 25, 2010.
“Migration and Multidirectional Memory in Contemporary Germany,” with Yasemin Yildiz, ACLA Conference, New Orleans, April 1, 2010.
“Holocaust Memory and the Israeli/Palestinian Crisis,” “Violence, Trauma, and Displacement in the Middle East and Eurasia,” University of Illinois and University of Chicago, Urbana, January 29, 2010.
“Provisional Possibilities: Literature as Transitional Justice in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” MLA Convention, Philadelphia, December 27, 2009.
“Mapping Muldirectional Memory: The Problem of Transnational Justice,” Transnational Studies Workshop, University of Illinois, October 9, 2009.
“Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization,” Program in Jewish Culture and Society, University of Illinois, August 31, 2009.
Roundtable on Philip Roth’s Exit, Ghost. American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 2008.
“La Place de la Concorde: Revisiting Sites of Memory in Leila Sebbar’s La Seine était rouge.” 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies. Georgetown University, March 7, 2008.
“A Tale of Three Ghettos: Holocaust Memory and the Algerian War.” Association of Jewish Studies. Toronto, December 16, 2007.
“’The Abstract Nakedness of Being Human’: Hannah Arendt and the Origins of Modernity.” Modernist Studies Association. Long Beach, November 2, 2007.
“Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” and “Structuralism.” Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. University of Illinois, August 28 and October 2, 2007.
Response to Pheng Cheah, “Crises of Money.” Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. University of Illinois, February 15, 2007.
“Hidden Children.” MLA Conference, Philadelphia, December 29, 2006.
“Little Jerusalem.” IPRH Panel Speaker, University of Illinois, October 18, 2006.
“Globalizing Abu Ghraib.” IPRH Panel Speaker, University of Illinois, April 20, 2006.
“Between Auschwitz and Algeria.” Jewish Studies Workshop, University of Illinois, March 9. 2006.
“Truth, Torture, Testimony.” MLA Convention. Washington, D.C. December 29, 2005.
Response to Walter Benn Michaels, “Plots Against America,” Transnational Citizenship and the Humanities Symposium, University of Illinois, March 15, 2005.
Chair and Speaker, “Theory, Popular Culture, and The Holocaust: A Workshop,” Lessons and Legacies, Brown University, Providence, November 6, 2004.
“Alternative Modernities or Alternatives to Modernity?,” Modernist Studies Association, Vancouver, October 22, 2004.
Chair, “The Study of Foreign Literatures,” Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois, September 23, 2004.
“Holocaust Memory, Colonial Fantasy, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” Jewish Studies Workshop, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, March 16, 2004.
Chair, “The Legacy of Edward Said,” University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, October 14, 2003.
“The Eichmann Trial and Holocaust Memory.” Invited speaker for: “Violence on Trial: A Panel on Global Justice in the 20th Century,” University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, October 9, 2003.
“Poetry, Testimony, and Holocaust Representation.” Invited speaker at: Humanities in the Classroom and Community: An Interdisciplinary Holocaust Curriculum for Illinois Educators, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, July 31, 2003.
“Legacies of Violence: Narrating History and Memory in Chronicle of a Summer.” International Narrative Conference, Berkeley, March 27, 2003.
“Race, Visuality, and Identification: Fanon, Kluger, Phillips.” MLA Convention, New York, December 29, 2002.
“Theory after the Holocaust.” With Neil Levi. Jewish Studies Workshop, University of Illinois, April 2, 2002.
Panelist. “The Future of the Holocaust.” University of Illinois, September 6, 2001.
“Mouse, Maus, and Mickey Mouse: Representing the Holocaust in an Age of Total Commodification.” AHA Convention, Boston, MA, January 6, 2001.
“Belonging and the Boundaries of Memory: Between the Post-Holocaust and the Postcolonial.” With Yasemin Yildiz. MLA Convention, Washington, DC, December 27, 2000.
“Construction Work: Theory, Periodization, and Labor in an Age of Globalization.” Marxism 2000, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2000.
“Dead Letter Office: Song of Solomon’s Posthumous Communication.” International Narrative Conference, Atlanta, GA, April 7, 2000.
“What Was the Twentieth Century? Theory, Interdisciplinarity, Periodization.” American Comparative Literature Association, Yale University, February 25, 2000.
“Traumatic Realism: Narrating Extreme Violence.” International Narrative Conference, Dartmouth College, April 1999.
Respondent and Co-organizer. “Remodeling Base and Superstructure in Cultural Studies.” MLA Convention, San Francisco. 29 December 1998.
“Traumatic Realism and the Demands of Holocaust Representation.” MLA Convention, San Francisco. 29 December 1998.
Chair, Panel on “History, Memory, Trauma,” Modern Language Association Convention, Toronto, December 29, 1997.
"Unbearable Witness: After 'The Concentrationary Universe,'" International Narrative Conference, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Gainsville, FL, April 1997.
"At the Limits of the Concentrationary Universe: History, Experience, and Holocaust Representation," Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, Tampa, FL, March 1997.
"'The Year of the Holocaust': Memory, Genocide, and Jewish-American Identity," Memory, History, and Critique, International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Utrecht, Netherlands, August 20, 1996.
"After Adorno: Culture in the Wake of Catastrophe," Memory, History, and Critique, International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Utrecht, Netherlands, August 19, 1996.
"'The Year of the Holocaust': Narrating Genocide and Jewish-American Identity," International Narrative Conference, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Columbus, Ohio, April 27, 1996.
"Maurice Blanchot's War: A/Wake 'After Auschwitz,'" Yale University Graduate Colloquium in French Studies, February 26, 1994 and Columbia University Graduate Student Conference on French and Comparative Literature, March 4, 1994.
"'Taking a Monstrous Turn': Fashion and Self-Fashioning, Cross-dressing and Commodification in Early Modern England," CUNY Graduate Center Women's Studies Conference, March 16, 1992.
"The Prostitution of Paris, Late Capital of the Twentieth Century," Benjamin for the Jetztzeit: 1892-1992, Duke University, February 21-23, 1992.