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This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the different ways in which the past remains present in Western popular culture in the twenty-first century. It combines theoretical analyses with case study-based chapters focusing on examples from Britain, the US, and Germany, among other countries. In doing so, it pushes beyond a simplistic and monolithic conception of what 'nostalgia' is to allow for a more nuanced and varied conceptualisation of this phenomenon, and to also incorporate other ways of understanding the invoking or inclusion of different histories within cultural objects, formats, and practices.
List of contents
Tobias Becker and Dion Georgiou, ''Do You Know How Nostalgia Works?' Pop Culture and the Uses of the Past'.- 2. Tobias Becker, 'Politics: The Use of Nostalgia in Political and Pop Cultural Criticism'.- 3. Michael D. Dwyer, 'Nostalgia is a Feeling'.- 4. Helen Wagner, 'Longing for Schimanski: On the Process of Deindustrialization in the Ruhr in Popular Culture'.- 5.Lily Kelting, 'From Fried Chicken to Kimchi Grits: Nostalgia for Southern Food Beyond the Lost Cause'.- 6. Gary Cross, 'Generation: Nostalgia and Lifecycles'.- 7. Kim Wiltshire, 'Re-making the Hegemonic British 1960s Male Icon for the New Millennium'.- 8.Dion Georgiou, ''...Get Your Adidas Sambas and Floppy Fringes in Place!': Twenty-First Century Cultural Industries, Heritagisation, Generational Memory, and Britpop'.- 9. Sabine Sielke, 'Experiences of Time, Reimagining Futures'.- 10. Susan Baumert, 'The Nostalgic and Creative Play with the Aesthetics of the Past:A Comparative Study of Three Main Retro-Events'.- 11. Fabrice Leroy, 'Back to the Future: Nostalgia and Reflexivity in Smolderen and Clérisse's Atomic Empire'.- 12. Michael Williams, 'I Dream in #mycalvins': The Improbable Neoclassicism of Justin Bieber'.- 13. Karl Borromäus Murr, 'The Role of Nostalgia in Jean Baudrillard's 'System of Objects''.- 14. Elodie Roy, 'The Consumption of Time: Wear, Patination and Retro-consumption in the Contemporary Age'.- 15. Rieke Jordan, 'Once Upon a Time on the Internet: Digital Nostalgia and the Music Album of the Twenty-First Century'.
About the author
Tobias Becker is a Visiting Professor of Modern History at Freie Universität Berlin. He has published widely on the history of popular culture and nostalgia. His most recent books include Popular Culture in Western Europe since 1800: A Student‘s Guide (2023) and Yesterday: A New History of Nostalgia (2023).
Dion Georgiou is a contemporary historian of environments, temporality and memory, popular culture, and conflict. He completed his PhD at Queen Mary University of London in 2016 and has since worked at the University of Chichester, King’s College London, and the University of Kent. He currently runs the Substack newsletter The Academic Bubble.
Summary
This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the different ways in which the past remains present in Western popular culture in the twenty-first century. It combines theoretical analyses with case study-based chapters focusing on examples from Britain, the US, and Germany, among other countries. In doing so, it pushes beyond a simplistic and monolithic conception of what ‘nostalgia’ is to allow for a more nuanced and varied conceptualisation of this phenomenon, and to also incorporate other ways of understanding the invoking or inclusion of different histories within cultural objects, formats, and practices.
