Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Holocaust: The Emergence of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory

Johannes Burgers, a Writer in Residence in the Library’s Wertheim Study and Doctoral Candidate at the Graduate Center CUNY, will present recent historical findings from his dissertation Conspiratorial Modernism: Modernism and Conspiracy Theory in Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, and Musil, which investigates the influence of anti-Semitism on modernist literature. This lecture will cover the extensive transatlantic exchange of anti-Semitic ideas that formed the basis of that influence. 

The Dreyfus Affair was a watershed moment in the modern history of Jewish persecution. Not only did anti-Semitism become a mainstream discourse, it also morphed into its own esoteric worldview. This worldview was supported by an ever expanding amount of theoretical literature, political tracts, and popular imagery. From the turn of the century to the Holocaust these doctrines became far more radical, and played a significant part in numbing the European populace to the ominous fate of the Jews.

For other lectures from the Wertheim Study, click here.