The Relevance and Representation of Wannsee: Frank Pierson's "Conspiracy" (2001)

Spring Lecture Series: "The Relevance and Representation of Wannsee: Frank Pierson’s Conspiracy (2001)"

Join the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas for the first of their annual Spring Lecture Series. Dr. Emily-Rose Baker will present, "The Relevance and Representation of Wannsee: Frank Pierson’s Conspiracy (2001)"

Held within the walls of a remote lakeside villa in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Wannsee Conference gathered 15 high-ranking Nazi officials who coordinated the implementation of the "Final Solution" to the so-called ‘Jewish question’ in occupied Europe. Under the chairmanship of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the decisions made at the conference set in motion the extermination of 6 million European Jews during the remaining Holocaust years. Attempts to understand what Mark Roseman has called the ‘business-like’ proceedings of the conference, in which well-educated Nazis calmly discussed the fates of their victims over lunch, have culminated in several on-screen representations of the event. This lecture discusses perhaps one of the better-known of these filmic depictions – American director Frank Pierson’s film Conspiracy, produced by HBO in 2001. Focusing on the romanticized depiction of the upper echelon of the Nazi hierarchy and their euphemistic language as well as questions of ethics and historical precision, it discusses the relevance of Wannsee itself and the significance of the film in building a picture of the conference – from which no full minutes remain – 80 years on.

Dr. Emily-Rose Baker is Visiting Assistant Professor of Film at the University of Texas at Dallas, as part of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. Emily-Rose completed her PhD in English Literature from the University of Sheffield in May 2021, where she specialized in post-communist memory cultures of the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe. Her teaching focuses on representations of genocide in art, film, and literature, and her research interests include visual Holocaust cultures; post-communist memory politics; Jewish-Slavic relations; decolonization; and psychoanalysis.

PARKING
Parking is available in any of the numbered metered spots in Lot M West (follow the event signs from the main University entrance off Campbell). You can use the parking coupon code 41246032 for complimentary parking.