Presentations

Keynote and plenary lectures
  • Craps, Stef. Keynote lecture to be delivered at the “Memory, Migration and the Archive” seminar, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 19th-20th November 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. Keynote lecture to be delivered at the “Memory and Materialism” Mnemonics graduate summer school, King's College London, UK, 8th-10th September 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. “The Holocaust and Comparative Genocide in the Poetry of Sherman Alexie.” Keynote lecture delivered at the “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism” symposium, University of Northampton, UK, 15th May 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. "'But what about all the Dachaus / in the United States?' Comparative Perspectives on the Holocaust in the Work of Sherman Alexie." Keynote lecture delivered at the “Transnational Holocaust Memory” conference, University of Leeds, UK, 26th-27th January 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. "Trends in Trauma Theory." Keynote lecture delivered at “The Future of Trauma and Memory Studies” graduate conference, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, 11th-12th April 2014.
  • Craps, Stef. "Postcolonial Hauntings: Trauma beyond Borders." Keynote lecture delivered at the "Global Spectralities" seminar, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 23rd-24th September 2013.
  • Craps, Stef, and Sean Bex. “Memory, Humanitarianism, and the White Savior Industrial Complex: Kony 2012 vs. What Is the What.” Keynote lecture delivered at the “Memory and Restitution” conference, University of Westminster, UK, 5th-6th July 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. “New Directions in Trauma Studies.” Keynote lecture delivered at the 15th Annual Conference of the English Department at the University of Bucharest, Romania, 6th-8th June 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. "Globalizing Trauma Theory." Sub-plenary lecture delivered at the 2012 ESSE Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, 4th-8th September 2012.
  • Craps, Stef. “On Not Closing the Loop: Empathy, Ethics, and Transcultural Witnessing.” Keynote lecture delivered at the “Empathy and Memory Studies” Conference, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 23rd June 2012.
Invited talks
  • Craps, Stef. Roundtable participant (with Bryan Cheyette and Alan Gibbs) at the “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism” symposium, University of Northampton, UK, 15th May 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. “The Holocaust and Comparative Genocide in the Work of Sherman Alexie.” Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 2nd March 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. “Travelling Trauma.” Transnational Memory Studies Seminar Series, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 12th February 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. “Proleptic Mourning in Climate Change Fiction.” “Climate, Change, Literature” workshop, Maastricht University, 6th-7th February 2015.
  • Craps, Stef. Response to session on “Missing Media, Absent Archives” at the 2014 Mnemonics Graduate Summer School, Stockholm University, Sweden, 21st-23rd August 2014.
  • Craps, Stef. “Trends in Trauma Theory” (lecture; watch video) and "Postcolonial Witnessing: The Example of Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay" (master class). Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, 10th June 2014.
  • Craps, Stef. Response to session on “Memories of the British Empire.” “Mediation and Memory” working group, Krakow conference COST Action “In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe,” Jagiellonian University, Poland, 16th-17th September 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. “The Future of Trauma.” Presented in the IGRS Research Seminar Series, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK, 12th June 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. Input paper for "Mediation and Memory" working group, inaugural conference COST Action "In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe," University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 16th-17th May 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. "'You call it a disorder . . . We call it life': Postcolonial Trauma in Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love.” Presented at a seminar co-hosted by the School of English Critical and Cultural Theory Research Group, the Postcolonial Research Group, and the Leeds Centre for Medical Humanities Seminar Series, University of Leeds, UK, 16th April 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. "Humanitarianism, Empathy, and Advocacy: Dave Eggers's What Is the What." University of East Anglia, UK, 19th March 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. "'You call it a disorder . . . We call it life': Postcolonial Trauma in Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love.” Presented in the Graduate Lecture Series, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 21st February 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. "Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds." Presented in the Cultural Memory Seminar, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK, 9th February 2013.
  • Craps, Stef. “On Not Closing the Loop: Empathy, Ethics, and Transcultural Witnessing.” Presented at “International Conference on Peace Studies: The Many Faces of Trauma, Resilience and Transformation,” Leuven University, Belgium, 30th-31st August 2012.
  • Craps, Stef. “A Postcolonial Critique of Trauma Theory.” Presented at the symposium “Bridging the Divide in Holocaust and Genocide Studies: Towards a Cross-Cultural Interdisciplinary Dialog,” University of Haifa, Israel, 12th-14th June 2012.
  • Craps, Stef. “Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds.” Presented at a workshop organized by the “Memory at War” HERA project, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 13th April 2012.
  • Craps, Stef. “World-Wide Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds.” Presented in the lecture series of the Culture, Religion and Memory research group of the Institute for Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands, 16th March 2012.
  • Craps, Stef. “Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay and the Postcolonial Persistence of Camp-Thinking.” Presented at “The I-Postcolonial” seminar, Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3, France, 25th March 2011.
  • Craps, Stef. “Globalizing Trauma Theory.” Presented at the “Beyond Aftermaths: Contemporary (Post-)Postmodernism in the Shadow of the Twentieth Century” conference, Groningen University, the Netherlands, 20th-21st December 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. “Beyond Eurocentrism: Trauma Theory in the Global Age.” Presented at the Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherche en Etudes Postcoloniales (CEREP), University of Liège, Belgium, 13th December 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. “Jewish/Postcolonial Diasporas in the Work of Caryl Phillips.” Presented at the “Metaphors of Diaspora in Contemporary UK Writing” Symposium, University of Alcalá, Spain, 5th November 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. Response to Sofía Muñoz-Valdivieso’s paper “Metaphors of Identity and Belonging in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Delivered at the “Metaphors of Diaspora in Contemporary UK Writing” Symposium, University of Alcalá, Spain, 5th November 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. “Postcolonial Witnessing: The Trauma of Empire, the Empire of Trauma.” Presented in the university seminar on Cultural Memory, Columbia University, USA, 9th March 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. Introduction to keynote address by Graham Swift at the Annual Conference of the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education, University of Liège, Belgium, 8th December 2007.
  • Craps, Stef. "Wor(l)ds of Grief: Traumatic Memory and Literary Witnessing in Cross-Cultural Perspective." Presented at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, 11th October 2007.
  • Craps, Stef. "Wor(l)ds of Grief: Traumatic Memory and Literary Witnessing in Cross-Cultural Perspective." Presented in the English Department staff seminar programme, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 8th October 2007.
  • Craps, Stef. “J. M. Coetzee’s Foe.” Presented at the ‘Masterclass’ on the theatre production Robinson Crusoe, de vrouw en de neger, NTGent, Ghent, Belgium, 8th March 2006.
  • Craps, Stef. "'Not a Moment of Terror but One of Strength': The Naudet Brothers’ 9/11 Documentary as an Exercise in Post-Traumatic Denial." Presented at "Cultural Memory: Workshop 9/11," Nijmegen University, the Netherlands, 13th May 2005.
Conference papers
  • Craps, Stef. Position paper. Roundtable on “Pre-Memory,” 2016 MLA Convention, Austin, USA, 7th-10th January 2016.
  • Craps, Stef. "'You call it a disorder . . . We call it life': Postcolonial Trauma in Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love.” Special session “Postcolonial Trauma,” 2014 MLA Convention, Chicago, USA, 9th-12th January 2014.
  • Smethurst, Toby, and Stef Craps. “Phantasms of War and Empire in Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road.” Presented at “The I-Postcolonial” conference, Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3, France, 22nd-24th March 2012.
  • Thewissen, Catherine, and Stef Craps. “De-Othering the Perpetrator: The True Face of Evil in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker.” Presented at the 2011 BAAHE Conference “Facing Present, Past and Future,” University College Brussels (HUB), Belgium, 1st-3rd December 2011.
  • Craps, Stef. “Holocaust Impiety in Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution.” Presented at the “American Responses to the Holocaust: Transatlantic Perspectives” conference, Roosevelt Study Center / University of Antwerp, the Netherlands / Belgium, 15th-17th June 2011.
  • Craps, Stef, and Gert Buelens. “Traumatic Mirrorings: Holocaust and Colonial Trauma in Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution.” Presented at the 2010 ESSE Conference, Turin, Italy, 24th-28th August 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. "Holocaust Memory and the Critique of Violence in Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza." Presented at the ACLA 2010 Annual Meeting: "Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms," New Orleans, USA, 1st-4th April 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. “Beyond Eurocentrism: Trauma Theory in the Global Age.” Presented at the “Trauma: Intersections among Narrative, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis” conference, George Washington University, Washington, USA, 4th-6th March 2010.
  • Craps, Stef. “Entangled Memories of the Holocaust and Partition in Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay.” Presented at “Literature and the Memory of Catastrophe: A Symposium," Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB), Brussels, Belgium, 29th-30th May 2009.
  • Craps, Stef. “Entangled Memories of the Holocaust and Partition in Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay.” Presented at the ACLA 2009 Annual Meeting: “Global Languages, Local Cultures,” Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, 26th-29th March 2009.
  • Craps, Stef. Response to Roger Sell’s paper “Trauma and the Ethics of Children’s Literature: Lynne Reid Banks’s Melusine: A Mystery (1988).” Delivered at the 2008 ESSE Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 22nd-26th August 2008.
  • Craps, Stef. “Testimony, Ventriloquism, and Complicity in the Novels of Caryl Phillips.” Presented at the 2008 ESSE Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 22nd-26th August 2008.
  • Craps, Stef. “Learning to Live with Ghosts: Postcolonial Haunting and Mid-Mourning in David Dabydeen’s Turner and Fred D’Aguiar’s Feeding the Ghosts.” Presented at the “Postcolonial Ghosts” conference, Montpellier University, France, 8th-10th November 2007.
  • Craps, Stef. “‘Only Not beyond Love’: Testimony, Subalternity, and the Famine in the Poetry of Eavan Boland.” Presented at the “Irish Women Writers: National and European Contexts” conference, Leuven University, Belgium, 24th-27th October 2007.
  • Craps, Stef. Response, special session “Trauma, Narrative and the Postcolonial” at the 2006 MLA Convention, Philadelphia, USA, 27th-30th December 2006 (co-organized with Gert Buelens).
  • Craps, Stef. “Linking Legacies of Loss: Traumatic Histories and Cross-Cultural Empathy in Caryl Phillips’s Higher Ground and The Nature of Blood.” Presented at the “Caryl Phillips: 25 Years of Writing” conference, University of Liège, Belgium, 1st-2nd December 2006.
  • Craps, Stef. “Beyond Recovery: Witnessing, Ethics, and Nationhood in the Poetry of Eavan Boland.” Presented at the "Poetry and Politics" conference, University of Stirling, UK, 12th-16th July 2006. read abstract>
  • Craps, Stef. “Literature as Witness: Unforgetting History in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.” Presented at "The Future of Memory: An International Holocaust and Trauma Studies Conference," University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Salford, UK, 10th-12th November 2005.
  • Craps, Stef. "J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and the Ethics of Testimony." Presented at the "Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics" conference, Ghent University, Belgium, 21st-23rd April 2005. read abstract>
  • Craps, Stef. “The Ethics of British Postmodern Realism.” Presented at the "Borders of Realism" conference, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1st-3rd December 2004.
  • Craps, Stef. "Class Matters in Graham Swift's Last Orders." Presented at the "Literature and Class" colloquium, Free University of Brussels (V.U.B.), Belgium, 22nd November 2001.
  • Craps, Stef. "The Politics of Working-Class Representation in Graham Swift's Last Orders." Presented at the "Cultural Studies: Between Politics and Ethics" conference, Bath Spa University College, UK, 6th-8th July 2001.
  • Craps, Stef. "From Narrative to Ethics in Graham Swift's Last Orders." Presented at the International Seminar (Netherlands Graduate School for Literary Studies in cooperation with University College London and Aarhus University) "Narrative, Literature, Media: Integration and Disintegration in an Era of Globalization," Aarhus University, Denmark, 18th-22nd June 2001.
  • Craps, Stef. "Gender Performativity in Woolf's Orlando." Presented at the "Image into Identity" conference, University of Hull, UK, 14th-17th September 2000.
  • Craps, Stef. "The Problematics of Historical Representation in the Work of Graham Swift." Presented at the International Seminar (Netherlands Graduate School for Literary Studies in cooperation with University College London and Aarhus University) "European Literature(s), World Literature(s), and Globalization," University of Leiden, the Netherlands, 19th-23rd June 2000.
  • Craps, Stef. "Gender as Performance in Woolf's Orlando." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education, Free University of Brussels (ULB), Belgium, 13th November 1999.
  • Craps, Stef. "Salman Rushdie's Shame: 'Using the Past as a Means of Purchasing the Future.'" Presented at the Erasmus Intensive Seminar (European Literary Studies) "Culture and (Post-)Colonialism in European Literatures," Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, 30th June-20th July 1997.