Ships are mobile, seaborn particles of land-based societies, and as such, they always reflect some basic structures and patterns of land-based societies. It’s almost as though if a land-based society goes on a ship, its structures become instantly more foregrounded with all its advantages, disadvantages, good sides, and bad sides.
– Roy
Roy Grundmann is an associate professor of film and media studies at Boston University College of Communication. Motivated by his longtime interest in maritime history, he has investigated the role of ocean liners as material objects, symbols, and mediums for transportation, with a specific interest in linking the question of the social or environmental landscape to the politics of (mis)representation. Roy’s most recent book, On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory, addresses the complex history behind the Jewish migrant passengers who traveled on the 1939 voyage of the Hamburg-Amerika-Line passenger ship St. Louis. He explored the power of the ocean liner as a biopolitical tool, one that harbors a history of expulsion, neo-colonialism, migration, and hope.
With MISI, Roy reinforced the specificity of his study, coordinating with relevant authorities and journalists to investigate how best to start public-facing conversations about the intersectionality of issues connected to ocean travel and how the media has represented them.