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1:00 PM-2:00 PM, EST
Between Fear and Hope: A Conversation about Displacement, Migration, and Belonging Across Eras and Continents
Book Talk| GEGENÜBER Talks – Literature Across Borders
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Online Online
- Language English
- Price Free of charge
- Part of series: GEGENÜBER TALKS
Contribution from the Goethe-Institut Boston
Between Fear and Hope: A Conversation about Displacement, Migration, and Belonging Across Eras and Continents
Roy Grundmann, author of On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory, and Julia Cumes, a photographer whose long-term project explores the lives, histories, and inner worlds of people who have crossed borders and rebuilt their lives far from home, come together to discuss the power of visual storytelling in illuminating resilience, identity, and the human search for safety and belonging. Drawing from his work on the MS St. Louis and her portrait series Invisible Threads, they reflect on how stories of displacement—past and present—shape our understanding of community, humanity, and hope.
About the participants
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Roy Grundmann
Roy Grundmann teaches Film Studies at Boston University. His recent research is at the intersection of film and media studies, migration studies, and maritime history. He researches how ships have shaped modernity and postmodernity’s cultural imaginaries about migration, encampment, de/colonization, and tourism. Most recently, he is the author of On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory (SUNY Press, October 1, 2025). His next book is tentatively titled Floating Signifiers: Ocean Liners in Literature, Film and Popular Culture (SUNY Press, 2028). Grundmann is a Contributing Editor of Cineaste Magazine. He has curated retrospectives on Andy Warhol, Matthias Müller, and Michael Haneke. His past publications include his monograph Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (2003). He is the editor of A Companion to Michael Haneke (2010) and Werner Schroeter (2018), and a co-editor of The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, Vols. 1-4 (2010), American Film: Selected Readings, Vol. 1, Origins to 1960 (2016), and Vol. 2, 1960 to the Present (2016), Michael Haneke: Interviews (2020), and Labour in a Single Shot: Critical Perspectives on Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki’s Global Video Workshop (2021).
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Julia Cumes
Julia Cumes is a photographer and visual storyteller whose work explores identity, migration, belonging across cultures and places. Born in apartheid-era South Africa and now based on Cape Cod, she brings a transnational perspective to long-term, collaborative projects that combine portraiture and narrative to reflect lived experience, memory, and place. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and published widely, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Her ongoing project Invisible Threads: Portraits and Stories of Our Global Neighbors focuses on the lives of immigrants on Cape Cod, connecting contemporary experiences of migration to the region’s longer history as a place of arrival in the American story. The project is expanding into a traveling exhibition and a forthcoming book with Daylight Books. In 2024, she was named Artist of the Year by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod and is currently a Boston University Community Impact Fellow. More of her work can be found at Julia Cumes
