Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future (Palgrave MacMillan Memory Studies)

Media and Nostalgia takes a closer look at the recent nostalgia boom and the relationship between media and nostalgia more generally; for example, digital photography that adopts a vintage style, the success of films such as The Artist and television series such as Mad Men, revivals of past music, fashion, and video games. However, this boom is not simply a fascination with the past; rather, it hints at something more profound. Expressions of nostalgia indicate a double helix type phenomenon with slower reactions to ever-faster technologies, and the possibility of an escape from the current crisis into a middle status of wanderlust (Fernweh) and a specific form of nostalgia such as homesickness. This collection explores, with a critical lens, the ways in which various media produce narratives of nostalgia, how they trigger nostalgic emotions and how they can in fact be a creative projection space in themselves.