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SoSe 21: S-Culture-Gender-Media: Nostalgia Now and Then

Lukas Lammers

Comments

“Return was continually on Odysseus’ mind, and the Greek word for it is nostos. His burning wish for nostos afflicted unbearable suffering on Odysseus, and the Greek word for it is algos. Nostalgia, then, is the psychological suffering caused by unrelenting yearning to return to one’s homeland.” (Sedikides et al. 200–201)

“There are, of course, many ways to look backward. You can look and reject. Or you can look and linger longingly.” (Hutcheon 196)

For a long time, nostalgia was considered a psychological disorder. It was the soldiers’ malady. More recently, it has been presented in a more positive light. Yet, in the British context, cultural critics have been worried about an apparent nostalgia boom in many areas. The two quotations above open up the field that we want to explore in this course. We will look at the development of notions of nostalgia and study a range of cultural products from literature and film to material culture and music.

As the quotations above suggest, there are at least two meanings of nostalgia, one a longing for a particular (absent) place, and the other a longing for a particular (bygone) time. In both cases, nostalgia points to a sense of loss. But what has been lost? For whom? How can that sense of loss and longing be triggered or created? Can a text, film, or song be nostalgic in or by itself? How far is nostalgia a defining feature of postmodernism? How does it relate to postcolonialism? Can nostalgia be created on purpose? For what purposes? For whose purposes? How does nostalgia connect past, present, and future?

The seminar will begin with a broad discussion of the phenomenon and a survey of relevant theoretical texts. We will then study a selection of fictional ‘texts’ and excerpts, including film and music. While we will focus on nostalgia in more recent British literature and culture, we will also try to explore the historical dimension of the phenomenon by considering ‘nostalgias of the past’. Themes will include: the politics of nostalgia, postmodern aesthetics, national and diasporic identity, the heritage industry, wartime Britain, historical class and gender relations, ‘deep England’.

The seminar will consist of a series of live sessions via WebEx, interspersed with several blocks of guided self-study and smaller group projects with short presentations, as well as the usual final essay.

Students wishing to participate must have completed the Aufbaumodul “Introduction to Cultural Studies”.

The two longer texts (below) must be obtained individually by all students. Other materials will be made available through Blackboard. Recommended editions:

Gardam, Jane. Last Friends. London: Abacus, 2014.

Naipaul, V. S. The Enigma of Arrival: A Novel in Five Sections. 1987. London: Picador, 2011.