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Research Seminar (584-0-20)

Topic

Nostalgia & Its Discontents

Instructors

Miriam B White

Meeting Info

Annie May Swift Hall 219: Wed 11:00AM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

This graduate seminar (re)considers the ways in which nostalgia in media culture is generally discussed. We will read some of the prominent literature on the topic while maintaining a healthy skepticism about many of the claims and categories that are typically tossed around in discussions of media and nostalgia. In addition to readings on nostalgia, we will also look at writing that skirts and/or stretches the limits of nostalgia. We will eschew imputing nostalgia to media texts in ways that flatten them and their viewers into a homogeneous blob of banal sentiment. Instead, we wonder how and why certain kinds of cultural representations get categorized as "nostalgic"—sometimes almost instantly—and pay attention to who is making the claim, on behalf of whom, and in response to what kinds of texts. The aim is to allow nostalgia its potential radical due, its affective fragmentations and dispersion (beyond binary categorizations), even as the culture sometimes tries to wrap it up in neat packages with (many) academics and popular critics affirming these efforts; and we will admit that sometimes the culture knows that it's just peddling an image.


Course readings will be available on Canvas. Students will have a choice of writing a handful of short essays/think pieces or one longer final paper on a topic of their choosing.