Nostalgia in the twenty-first century

This special issue, “Nostalgia in the Twenty-First Century,” reflects on nostalgia as a shaping cultural force in the contemporary world and makes a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the existing literature on this subject. It builds on the insights of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series hosted at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, throughout 2010 and 2011. Our initial interest in hosting the series was stimulated by our growing awareness that the range of literatures on nostalgia within our respective disciplines – Marketing and English Studies – had rarely been brought into intellectual exchange. Accordingly, the series of six seminars focused on what we came to identify as key interdisciplinary themes in current engagements with, and representations of, the past: material cultures (retro, print and media),
urban nostalgia, diaspora and sustainability. This issue develops these conversations about the functions of nostalgia and brings together the work by scholars and practitioners from a wide range of theoretical perspectives and industry experiences – film, literary criticism, commercial marketing, cultural geography, museum studies – to illuminate twenty-first century dialogues on the uses of nostalgia in contemporary culture.