On Shoreless Sea
The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory
Format:Hardback
Publisher:State University of New York Press
Published:1st Oct '25
£102.00
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- Paperback£22.00(9798855803761)
Combines new archival research with innovative theory to reassess the ship's dramatic voyage and analyze its representation in a broad range of texts, films, and artifacts of popular memory.
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. Denied permission to dock in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the ship was finally forced to return to Europe, where many of teh refugees ultimately perished in the Holocaust. 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.
"Written in lucid prose and supported by detailed archival work, this book is a significant contribution to the argument that the Holocaust and colonialism were not two separate processes but profoundly entwined." — Max Silverman, Professor of Modern French Studies, University of Leeds, and author of Palimpsestic Memory: The Holocaust and Colonialism in French and Francophone Fiction and Film
"Grundmann digs beneath the layers of international popular memory and scholarship by coupling impressive archival research with novel conceptual frameworks to provide new—if still controversial—perspectives on the facts as well as the myths and cultural lore about the tragic incident. He implicates the degraded ethical legacies of Western racist biopolitics and colonialist histories as inadequately assessed factors leading to a tragedy not dissimilar to those occurring today. Readers may find most striking Grundmann's searching readings of films and other popular cultural memorial forms that, informed by Michael Rothberg's concept of 'multidirectional memory,' can generate revelatory investigative strategies for Holocaust studies scholars to pursue and provide new insights into contemporary tragedies." — Stuart Liebman, Emeritus Professor of Art History and Film Studies, CUNY Graduate Center
"On Shoreless Sea is an incredibly detailed and comprehensive examination of the events involved and is of particular interest to the film scholar readership toward whom the book is especially dedicated. Grundmann shows himself to be an astute interpreter and chronicler of history and a passionate advocate that this story is worth memorializing in detail in readable prose and with intelligent organization." — Dr. Richard Barton Palmer, Clemson University
ISBN: 9798855803754
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 31mm
Weight: 748g
476 pages