Faculty

Lauren Walsh

Part-Time Faculty

Email
walshl@newschool.edu

Office Location
A - Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall - 66 West 12th Street

Download vCard

Profile

My book with Bloomsbury Press, Conversations on Conflict Photography (2019), focuses on coverage of war and humanitarian crises. I'm coeditor of  The Future of Text and Image (2012) and Millennium Villages Project (2016), a photo book examining the UN goals to alleviate extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. I'm also editor of Macondo, a photo book documenting the long-term conflict in Colombia. I've published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Photography and Culture, the Romanic Review, the New Republic, the Journal of American History and Nomadikon, among others, and have pieces in numerous anthologies. I've appeared on CNN as a scholar of photography and digital culture as well as in the documentary 9/11: Ten Years Later (RAI 2011). 

I have curated photography shows at The Gallatin Galleries; these exhibitions explore the dynamics between collective memory, history, and photography. And I'm Project Director for Lost Rolls America, a national archive of photography and memory. Visit the archive: www.lostrollsamerica.com

Broadly speaking, my research focuses on questions of memory and visual media, and I'm particularly interested in the politics and ethics of photography. I focus on photojournalism, with a specialty in conflict photography. My scholarship and my teaching also explore the intersections of literature and visual culture, and I concentrate on journalism, in particular for my classes, on the coverage of New York City, both present day and historic. 

I am currently co-directing Biography of a Photo, a documentary film on two iconic photos of conflict. That work has taken me to Panama, where I met with President Juan Carlos Varela. See the trailer here: www.biographyofaphoto.com 

Degrees Held

Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

M.A., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

B.A., Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Recent Publications

Books

Conversations on Conflict Photography. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Macondo: Memories of the Colombian Conflict. Ed. Lauren Walsh. Madrid, 2017.

The Millennium Villages Project. Coedited with Ron Haviv and Gary Knight. NY: De.MO. 2016.

The Future of Text and Image: Collected Essays on Literary and Visual Conjunctures. Co-edited with Ofra Amihay. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.

Selected articles and book chapters

·      “Picturing the Past.” Macondo. Brizzolis: Madrid, 2017.

·      “The Omni American Author: An Albert Murray Collection.” Hyperallergic. January 23, 2017.

·      Interview with photojournalist Michael Christopher Brown on his 2011 coverage of the Libyan Revolution, Hyperallergic, September 10, 2016. 

·       “The Lost Rolls and the Unreliable Shadow of Memory.” In The New Republic. March 2016. 

·      “Text, Image, Memory: Intermediality in the Work of Péter Nádas.” Hungarian Literature and its Intercultural Contexts: Translation, Cultural Memory, Comparative Scholarship. Eds. András Kiséry, Zsolt Komaromy, and Zsuzsanna Varga. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016.

·      Translation of “New Tendencies in Jazz” by Albert Murray. (Speech originally delivered in French, 1958. Never before published.) Murray Talks Music. Ed. Paul Devlin. Minneapolis:Minnesota University Press, 2016.

·      "Swimming in the Unreliable Shadow of Memory," introduction to The Lost Rolls by Ron Haviv. Blurb, 2015.

·      “Gender, Art, Perception: Lauren Walsh interviews Siri Hustvedt.” Los Angeles Review of Books. March 24, 2014.

·      “In Memory of Albert Murray.” Los Angeles Review of Books. September 16, 2013.

·      “Inside FSG: An Interview with Boris Kachka.” Los Angeles Review of Books. August 4, 2013.

·      “The Madeleine Revisualized: Proustian Memory and Sebaldian Visuality.” The Future of Text and Image: Collected Essays on Literary and Visual Conjunctures. Eds. Amihay, Ofra and Lauren Walsh. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.

·      “Ten Years Later: Re-viewing 9/11’s Suppressed Images.” Nomadikon, “About Images” series. Ed. Øyvind Vågnes. (August 2011).

·      “Murray Riffing on Mann: Variations on a Theme.” Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation. Ed. Barbara Baker. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2010.

·      “Candide, or Optimism, Dude. The Challenges of Translating Voltaire’s Candide.” Candide at 250: Scandal and Success. Exhibition at The New York Public Library, February-April, 2010.

Performances and Appearances

Recent lectures/appearances/curatorial work

1. Co-Organizer, “The Arts in Post-Conflict Society,” conference, Sarajevo, Bosnia, July 6-13, 2019

2. Speaker, Behind the Scenes: Biography of a Photo.” Masterclass at Panama Film Festival, Panama. April 6, 2019

3. Moderator, “Artist Talk with Spencer Platt.” The Westport Arts Center, Connecticut, January 2019

4. Guest speaker, Memory Module festival, Sarajevo March, 2018

5. Exhibition: Lost Rolls America, MOPLA photo festival, Los Angeles, April 2018

6. Invited speaker, “Iconic Images in the Aftermath of Conflict,” Emerging Consequences Symposium, Salem State, MA, November 3-4, 2017.

7. Editor, Lost Rolls America exhibition at Photoville, Brooklyn NY, September 13-24, 2017, and Editor, Millennium Villages Project exhibition at Photoville, Brooklyn NY, September 13-24,2017

8. Invited speaker, Masterclass, “From Photography to Film.” The Sarajevo Film Festival, August, 2017.

9. Keynote, “The Afterlives of Photos in the Aftermath of War.” Why Remember? Memory and Forgetting in Times of War and Its Aftermath,” Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, June 29, 2017.

10. Invited speaker following a screening of The White Helmets, The New School, New York, NY, April 13, 2017

11. Invited guest for podcast on “Photojournalism Today,” by The Rubber Factory art gallery, New York, NY, April 10, 2017.

12. Invited speaker, “Memory in the Time of Disposable Imagery,” SXSW, Austin, TX, forthcoming March 13, 2017

13. Invited speaker, “Biography of a Photo,” Casa Santa Ana Cultural Foundation, Panama, December 16, 2016.

14. Organizer and Moderator of panel. “Conflict and Reconciliation in Colombia,” NYU Gallatin, New York, December 13, 2016.

15. Invited speaker, keynote, “Iconic Images and their Impact on Society—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” LDV Vision Summit, New York, NY, May 2016.
16. Invited speaker, Double Take reading series at Apexart, NYC, April 2016
17. Invited speaker, “Albert Murray’s Elaboration and Refinement of Thomas Mann.” Columbia University, February 2016.
18. Invited speaker, "The Nature of Memory and the Design of Images," Pechakucha NYU, February 2016
19. Curator, photo show, “Lost to History: Covering Conflict in the Age of the Eternal Present.” The Gallatin Gallery, New York, NY. September-October, 2015
20.  Organizer and Moderator of “Ethics, Conflicts, and the Photographic Image,” panel with Andrea Bruce, Emma Daly, and Ron Haviv, part of “Human Rights Week” at NYU. New York, NY. September 21, 2015
21.  Invited speaker. “Souvenir, Trophy, Crime: Photography and War in the Digital Age.” Morbid Anatomy Museum. Brooklyn, NY. July 14, 2015
22.  Invited speaker, “Albert Murray: His Life and Work.” Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. New York, NY. November 13, 2014
23. Invited guest on CNN, New Day Saturday program on “Facebook Controversy and Privacy Concerns.” Interviewed by Alison Kosik and Victor Blackwell. Live broadcast. July 5, 2014
24. Invited speaker, “Practices of Remembrance, Then and Now: The Holocaust and 9/11.” Lifelong Learning Institute, Youngstown, OH. May 20, 2014
25. “9/11 Archives: Of the People, By the People, and For the People?” American Comparative Literature Association: Capitals. New York University, March 20-23, 2014
26. Invited guest on radio program “Trading Fours,” hosted by Jackie Modeste. Topic: Albert Murray. November 17, 2013
27. Invited guest on CNN, New Day Saturday program on “Memory in the Digital Age.” Interviewed by Victor Blackwell and Ana Cabrera. Live broadcast. October 19, 2013
28. Co-organizer and moderator, Encounters of History and Culture in the Napoleonic Era. The New School, New York City, May 8, 2012

Research Interests

• Visual culture; 
• Memory studies;
• War reportage/war photography;
• Photography (ethics, history, critical issues);
• Journalism and social activism;
• Museums in the digital age;
• Social media

Current Courses

First Year Seminar

Photojournalism & Urban Crisis

Urban Journalism (Spring 2019)