Although the legendary, award-winning Hollywood picture Casablanca (1942) has been called “everyone’s favorite émigré film,” in the memorable formulation by Thomas Elsaesser, rarely is it discussed in this vein. Drawing on extensive research undertaken for his book We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie (W.W. Norton, 2017), Noah Isenberg seeks to shed new light on this often neglected aspect—refocusing attention on the dozens of refugees at work on both sides of the camera; on the strangely evocative if also veiled commentary on historical events; and on the furtive references to Jews and other targets of Nazi persecution. One of the all-time most cherished love stories and wartime dramas of the studio era may also be seen as one of the earliest and most successful feature films to address the menace of National Socialism, the flight of European refugees, and the personal stories embodied in even the most minor characters portrayed on screen.

In anticipation of this book presentation, a film screening of Casablanca will also be held at Sherith Israel on Thursday, June 7. Click here to register to the screening.

Noah Isenberg is Professor of Culture and Media at the New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, where he also directs the Screen Studies program. He is the author, most recently, of We’ll Always Have ‘Casablanca’: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie, published by W.W. Norton in February 2017 (and in November 2017 by Faber & Faber in the UK and by Európa, in Hungarian translation, in Budapest), which earned a spot on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list, was named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review, was selected as a Summer Book of 2017 by the Financial Times and a Best Film Book of 2017 by the Scotland Herald.

In support of his work, he has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He serves as book review editor of Film Quarterly, is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and was awarded a 2015-2016 NEH Public Scholar research grant. His writing has appeared in such diverse publications as: The Nation, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Salon, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, New York Review of Books Daily, Film Comment, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Criterion Collection, The Threepenny Review, Film Quarterly, New German Critique, Partisan Review, Raritan, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Book Review. From 1995-2004, he taught at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and at Dartmouth College.