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The Promise of Nostalgia: Reminiscence, Longing and Hope in Contemporary American Culture
The Promise of Nostalgia analyses a range of texts - including The Virgin Suicides, both the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides' and Sofia Coppola's screen adaptation, photography of Detroit's 'abandoned spaces', and blogger Tavi Gevinson's media output - to explore nostalgia as a prominent affect in contemporary American cultural production.
Counter to the prevalent caricature of nostalgia as anti-future, the book proposes a more nuanced reading of its stakes and meanings. Instead of understanding it as evidence of the absence of utopia it contends that there is a masked utopian impulse in this nostalgia 'mode' and critical potential in what has typically been dismissed as ideological.
This book will be of interest to scholars, graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students interested in contemporary culture, cultural theory, media studies, the Frankfurt School, utopian studies and American literature and culture.
Counter to the prevalent caricature of nostalgia as anti-future, the book proposes a more nuanced reading of its stakes and meanings. Instead of understanding it as evidence of the absence of utopia it contends that there is a masked utopian impulse in this nostalgia 'mode' and critical potential in what has typically been dismissed as ideological.
This book will be of interest to scholars, graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students interested in contemporary culture, cultural theory, media studies, the Frankfurt School, utopian studies and American literature and culture.
216 pages, ebook
Published January 8, 2020
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January 1, 2026
Excellent examination of the middle ground between utopian and regressive ideologies of nostalgia. I picked this up as a part of my literature review for my master's thesis and it has been incredibly clarifying! Highly recommend to anyone interested in contemporary nostalgia, especially filmic representations. Her chapter on The Virgin Suicides is really great!
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