Location
German Historical Institute, London
To say that nostalgia has a bad reputation among historians would be an understatement. Apart from a few notable exceptions, historians usually view nostalgia as the very opposite of history—Charles Maier calls it ‘kitsch’, Tony Judt even a ‘sin’. Other disciplines—philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology—have no such preconceptions. In particular, literary, cultural and media studies have recently produced a body of research on nostalgia in various media and genres.
Although some of these studies take a historical approach, we still know very little about the history of nostalgia. Has it always been around or is it a peculiarly modern phenomenon? How did it change over time? Who felt nostalgic, for what and why? And how does nostalgia influence perceptions of the past? These questions are all the more acute as both recent research and historians’ condescension towards nostalgia—both drawing on older texts and prejudices—are in need of historicisation.
Yet, how can nostalgia be historicised? This is the central question of this conference. Interested in both theories of nostalgia and in empirical case studies, it looks at the role of nostalgia in politics, society, culture, the media and material culture. The conference brings together scholars from many different disciplines, hoping to start a transdisciplinary exchange into the roots, development and history of nostalgia and its meaning today.
The conference will open with two keynotes by eminent researchers. Constantine Sedikides is Professor of Psychology at Southampton University where he is part of a large research project on nostalgia, the findings of which he will present in his lecture. Achim Landwehr is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Düsseldorf whose latest book is a highly original and innovative account of the emergence of a new understanding of time in the seventeenth century. At the conference he will speak about ‘Nostalgia and the Turbulence of Time’. Finally, Professor David Lowenthal, whose book The Past is a Foreign Country (1985) has long since become a classic, will close the conference with some general comments.
Programme
Thursday, 1 October 2015
13:00 Registration
13:15-13:45 Welcome and Introduction.. Andreas Gestrich (London), Tobias Becker (London)
13:45-15:00 Keynote. Chair: Andreas Gestrich
Constantine Sedikides (Southampton), Back to the Future: Nostalgia Fosters Optimism, Inspiration, and Creativity
15:00-17:00 Panel I: Theorising Nostalgia. Chair: Fernando Esposito (Tübingen)
Achim Saupe (Berlin), “Good old things”: Nostalgia and the discourse of historical authenticity
Ishay Landa (Ra’anana), The Nostalgia for Pain: Examining a Modern Trope
Rogério Miguel Puga (Lisbon), The Myth of Saudade in Portuguese-speaking Countries: Art, Lusophone Self-Stereotypes, and (Psychological) ‘National Traits’
17:00-17:30 Coffee Break
17:30-19:00 Keynote 2. Chair: Michael Schaich (London)
Achim Landwehr (Düsseldorf), Nostalgia and the Turbulence of Time
Friday, 2 October
9:30 Panel 2: Political Nostalgia. Chair: Esra Özyürek (London)
Patricia Lorcin (Minneapolis), Memory and Nostalgia in the Post-Colonial Context
Manca G. Renko (Koper), Habsburg Nostalgia
11:00-11:15 Coffee Break
Torben Philipp (Berlin), Affective Memory in State Socialism: Nostalgic Explorations of the past during the Era of Stagnation
Owen Molloy (Norwich), Nostalgia for West Germany: Rationalising the Emergence of Westalgie
13:00-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-16:00 Panel 3: Industrial Nostalgia. Chair: Lutz Raphael (Trier)
Jörg Arnold (Nottingham), The Future that Never Came: De-Industrialisation, Nostalgia and the Politics of Temporality
Tim Strangleman (Canterbury), Smokestack Nostalgia? The Work of Memory in Understanding Industrial Decline
Peter F. N. Hörz (Göttingen), Processions Towards Railway History—On Rusty Tracks: What ‘Rail Hikers’ Are Doing and What They Have in Mind While Walking on Shutdown Railway Lines
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
16:30-18:30 Panel 5: Media Nostalgia. Chair: Amy Holdsworth (University of Glasgow)
Katharina Niemeyer (Paris), Nostalgising the Past, Present and Future: A Reflection on Homesickness, Media and Amateur Nostalgia
Dominik Schrey (Karlsruhe), Forgotten Theories of Nostalgia: Prolegomena to an Alternate Cultural History of the Concept
Gintare Malinauskaite (Berlin), Vilne Nostalgia in New York: Visual Memories of the Lithuanian Jews after the Shoah
Saturday, 3 October
9:30-11:30 Panel 4: Object Nostalgia. Chair: Len Platt (London)
Reinhild Kreis (Mannheim), Mixed feelings. Do it yourself, nostalgia, and social reform in 20th century Germany
Eva C. Heesen (Hannover), Nostalgia as Escapism: An Invaluable Tool for Museums
Kerstin Stamm (Bonn/Berlin), Future Shock? European Heritage Conservation and Nostalgia for the Past in the 1970s
Karl B. Murr (Augsburg/München), The Function of Nostalgia in Jean Baudrillard’s System of Objects
11:30-12:00 Coffee Break
12:00-13:30 Comment and general discussion. Chair: Tobias Becker
Comment by David Lowenthal (London)
For more information visit the conference blog at https://nost.hypotheses.org.
If you want to register for the conference, please write to Carole Sterckx (sterckx@ghil.ac.uk