(for copies of any of these papers, please email me: jwallen@hampshire.edu)
“Stranded in a Polish Border Town: Creating Memories from Handkerchiefs in Zbaszyn,” co-written with Aubrey Pomerance, Lessons & Legacies, Prague, November 6 – 9, 2023
“Fathoming the Depths in The Tree of Life: The Loneliness of the Female Yiddish Writer,” Conference on Chava Rosenfarb and Jewish Female Writers of the 20th Century,” Lodz, Poland, October 18-20, 2023
“The Purposes, Perils, and Tolls of Holocaust Scholarship: Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster,” Lessons & Legacies, Ottawa, November 11-15, 2022
“Not Clueless: Branwen Okpako’s Tal der Ahnungslosen,” German Studies Association, Houston, September 16-18, 2022
“Learning from Handkerchiefs,” Society of Architectural Historians, April 13-16, 2021
“Learning from Objects: Using Artifacts for Teaching and Researching the Holocaust,” Association for Jewish Studies, December 13-17, 2020
“Learning from Objects: Innovative Research and Teaching with Artifacts from the Jewish Museum Berlin,” Workshop with Aubrey Pomerance,Special Lessons and Legacies Conference, The Holocaust and Europe: Research Trends, Pedagogical Approaches, and Political Challenges, Munich November 4−7, 2019
“Facing the Sonderkommando: Son of Saul and the Dynamics of Witnessing,” conference on “Telling, Describing Representing Extermination: The Auschwitz Sonderkommando, their Testimony and their Legacy,” Berlin, April 12-13, 2018
“The Actor as Witness?” Modern Language Association panel “Son of Saul: A Conversation with Géza Röhrig,” New York, January 4-7, 2018
“Die Welt von Morgen? The Political Future for Stefan Zweig,” Modern Language Association panel on “The Timeliness and Timelessness of Stefan Zweig,” New York, January 6, 2018
“Jewish Museums and Material Culture,” Association for Jewish Studies, Washington, D.C., December 18, 2017
“The Migration of Objects and the Trusteeship of Memory,” British Association for Jewish Studies, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 12, 2017
“Son of Saul: The Ethics of Witnessing,” Association for Jewish Studies, San Diego, December 19, 2016
“The Changing Relation Between Teaching and Research Across the Stages of Our Careers,” Modern Language Association panel on “Research and Teaching,” Austin, January 9, 2016
“The Migration of Objects and the Trusteeship of Memory,” Modern Language Association panel on “Memory and Migration,” Austin, January 7, 2016
“The Migration of Objects, Material Culture, and the Transmission of Memory,” Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, December 13, 2015
“The Migration of Objects and the Trusteeship of Memory” (with Aubrey Pomerance), “Things and People on the Move” workshop, Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago, May 14-16, 2015
“Towards a Micro History of Christianstadt,” Lessons and Legacies conference, Boca Raton, FL, October 30-November 2, 2014
“Testimony in the Plural: How Does the Archive Speak?” Association for Jewish Studies seminar on “Video Interviews of Holocaust Survivors,” Boston, December 15-16, 2013
“Memorializing a Third Space: The Scheunenviertel,” American Association of Geographers conference, Los Angeles, April 9-13, 2013
“Dueling Archives: Kempowski and Saramago,” Modern Language Association Panel on “The Archival Turn” [which I organized], January 4, 2013
“Why Is This Novel So Different? Bergelson’s The End of Everything and European Modernism,” Modern Language Association Panel on “Access to Western Culture, Its Fulfillments, Its Illusions,” American Association of Professors of Yiddish, Boston, January 4, 2013
“The Archive and the Witness,” Micro History and the Holocaust conference, Ecole Normale Supériure, Paris, December 5-7, 2012
“The Lure of the Archive: The Atlas Group Projects of Walid Raad,” Muthesius Kunsthochshule in Kiel, June 16, 2011
“Testimony and Taboo: The Perverse Testimony of Ka-Tzetnik 135633,” University of Haifa, February 27, 2011
“Trauma Testimony in the Era of the Archive,” Trauma Testimony Discourse Conference, Tel Aviv University, February 21-24, 2011
“The Archive, the Eyewitness, and the Stasi,” German Studies Association Conference, October 7-10, 2010
“The Lure of the Archive: The Atlas Group Projects of Walid Raad,” British Comparative Literature Association Conference, Kent University, July 5-8, 2010
“The Discourse of Transference,” with Jean McGarry, The VII Annual Social Theory Forum, Critical Social Theory: Freud and Lacan For the 21st Century, April 7, 2010
“Testimony and Taboo: The Perverse Testimony of Ka-Tzetnik 135633,” Association for Jewish Studies, Panel on “Writing Destruction,” December 21, 2009
“Migrant Visions: The Scheunenviertel and Boyle Heights, Los Angeles,” Conference on “Transforming Berlin’s Urban Space: East European Jewish Migrants in Charlottengrad and the Scheunenviertel, 1918-39,” The Free University, Berlin, October 17-19, 2009
“Twemlow’s Abyss,” Conference on “Dickens, Victorian Fiction, Uneasy Pleasure,” The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, June 14-18, 2009
“Remediation, Yes. Media Studies, No,” Modern Language Association, Panel on “Comparative Literature and Media Studies, Convergence or Conflict?” December 28, 2008
“Narrative Tensions: The Eyewitness and the Archive,” Interdisciplinary Symposium on Eyewitness Narratives, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, November 25-27, 2007
“Sociable Robots and the Posthuman,” Close Encounters: The 4th European Biannual Conference of the Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts, Amsterdam, June 13-16, 2006
“A Crisis of Imagination: What Can’t Be Recognized–or Spoken–By the Media,” Conference on “Communication in Crisis,” University of Massachusetts, Amherst, March 31, 2006
“Falling Under an Evil Influence,” Conference on “Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness,” Salzburg, Austria, March 17, 2006
“Gender in the Age of Sociable Robots,” Conference on “Das Geschlecht des (Post-)Humanen,” Freie Universität Berlin, January 15, 2005
“Autobiography on the Internet: Representations of Self in a Posthuman Era,” Modern Language Association, Panel on “Technologies of the Self,” December 29, 2004
“From the Archives,” Conference on “Remediating Handwriting,” Bauhaus University Weimar, June 18, 2004
“Mesmerism: The Fascination and Fear of Being Under the Influence,” Modern Language Association, Panel on “The Occult Enlightenment II,” December 29, 2003
“Viewed from Abroad: Paradoxes and Pleasures of Teaching the Canon in France,” Modern Language Association, Panel on “Teaching in the Postcanonical Age,” December 29, 2003
“Autobiography on the Internet: Representations of Self in a Posthuman Era,” Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, Harvard University, April 22, 2003
“Under the Influence: Narrative Authority in Maupassant’s ‘Le Horla’ and Brontë’s Villette,” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature Conference, at UC Berkeley, March 29, 2003