On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory
Wednesday, Sept. 5, 20256:30 - 8:00 pm ET (US)
Hybrid In-Person and Zoom Webinar
Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, Brandeis University Campus
About the Event
In 1939, the ocean liner MS St. Louis undertook a dramatic voyage with over nine hundred Jewish refugees that caught the world's attention and has been remembered in numerous printed texts, films, and artifacts. On Shoreless Sea is the first work to comprehensively analyze the journey's unfolding, its historical context, and its key representations in various media. Based on new archival research and featuring a translation of Captain Gustav Schröder's account of the voyage, the book corrects long-standing misassumptions about its subject. Author Roy Grundmann illuminates the voyage's historical significance and demonstrates its relevance to our present, in which prosperous nations once again stem mass migration. Arguing that the Jewish refugee crisis was caused not only by anti-Semitism but also by colonialism and neocolonialism, Grundmann calls for Holocaust studies to expand its field of inquiry and methodology. Working at the intersection of Holocaust studies, postcolonial theory, film and media studies, and cultural studies, On Shoreless Sea reads St. Louis memory culture as a reservoir of contradictory attitudes toward migration whose texts both intentionally and inadvertently testify to the need to discuss the Holocaust in relation to other genocides without denying its uniqueness.
About the Speaker
Roy Grundmann teaches Film Studies at Boston University. He works at the intersection of
film/media studies, migration studies, and maritime history—specifically, how ships have shaped modernity and postmodernity’s cultural imaginaries about migration, encampment, de/colonization, and tourism.