For some time, the discipline of the Blue Humanities, which investigates the relationship between civilization and the sea, has taken an interest in the ship and all its technological, historical, and cultural dimensions. This epistemological groundwork has brought into focus, among other things, the role of the classic ocean liner as both object and shaper of cultural imaginaries. Drawing on his recently published book On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory and on examples from the next phase of his study of the role of ocean liners in literature, film, and visual culture, Roy Grundmann explores methodologies and discusses cinematic case studies that help us understand the classic ocean liner both as a specific technological/cultural object and an “environing,” world-making medium that, by helping transform cultures around the world, has coded and recoded the oceans that connect those cultures.
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. His book On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory was published on October 1, 2025, by SUNY Press. His book Floating Signifiers: Ocean Liners in Literature, Film, and Visual Culture is forthcoming from SUNY Press in 2028.