CFP Special Issue of JEA 10(1): Nostalgia Now
- Tereza Kuldova
- Jun 2
- 3 min read
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of JEA 10(1): Nostalgia Now
Special Issue of the Journal of Extreme Anthropology
Editor-in-Chief: Tereza Østbø Kuldova
Special Issue Editors: Simon Winlow and Tereza Østbø Kuldova
Nostalgia seems to be everywhere these days. We can see it in new populist political movements, in the hollow rhetoric of anxious technocratic elites, in the movies and television shows we watch, in the music we listen to and in the marketing strategies that accompany both exclusive and everyday consumer items. But can we say with certainty that the nostalgia of the current moment is in any way different from the various forms of individual and collective nostalgia experienced throughout our recent history? Do individual and collective forms of nostalgia fulfil the same functions, arise from similar conditions and impact the same social groups? Might it be reasonable to suggest that – as so many appear to imagine themselves external to the standard flows of chronological time, disconnected from history and unable to access appealing narratives about the future – nostalgia is emerging in new contexts and in new forms? What might the patterns and themes in the contemporary experience of nostalgia reveal about the various ways we interpret our own disjointed age?
This special issue of the Journal of Extreme Anthropology aims to unpack the complexities of contemporary nostalgia in all its forms. It aims to shed new light upon the experience of nostalgia, its connections to other forms of memory, the role it plays in all aspects of politics, its institutional contexts, its ideological roles, its complex and shifting relationships with the present and the future, its role in consumer markets, its place in the symbolic life of communities and its function in individualised societies that seem devoid of genuine communalism.
Traditionally, nostalgia and those who succumb to it have been associated with failure, withdrawal and regression. The nostalgic individual is commonly depicted as turning away from an unsatisfying present and seeking solace in sanitized, commodified images of an idealized past. A broad range of popular contemporary analyses tend to simply historicise, contextualise and reaffirm the standard multipolar interpretation of nostalgia as inherently regressive, a problem for the other but never the self, before asserting that it is once again on the march to threaten freedoms, curtail progress and prevent us from honestly appraising the world as it truly is. But must we see those who find comfort in the imagery of the past as potential recruits for the army of regression? What other factors might spur the disconnected individual to turn away from the disorder of the present and towards something that seems to offer a degree of comfort? We invite papers that both challenge and refine standard approaches to the study of nostalgia. We are also keen to incorporate a broad range of analyses and analytical forms. We welcome original theoretical or conceptual work as well as empirical studies of all kinds, while encouraging in particular those grounded in fieldwork and informed by anthropological and criminological perspectives.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
Cultural analyses of collective nostalgia, for example the role of nostalgia in the cultural life of native, migrant, immigrant or refugee communities
Critical accounts of idealised pasts
Nostalgia and religiosity
Nostalgia for the communist or social democratic past
Nostalgia in the life course
The place of nostalgia in the ideologies of the far right and left
Theoretical or conceptual work addressing various cultural and political antagonisms toward nostalgia
Nostalgia as a theme in recent political campaigns
Institutionalised nostalgia, and institutionalised limits placed on nostalgia
Nostalgia for modern institutions (and antagonism towards the contemporary versions of those same institutions)
Nostalgia for lost intimacy
Nostalgia, melancholy and mourning
Ethnographic and qualitative studies of nostalgic cultures and communities
Attempts to track or chart variations in the experience of nostalgia
The use of nostalgia in branding and marketing, and the appeal of nostalgic imagery to various consuming publics
Technocratic nostalgia
Nostalgia for lost objects
Populism and nostalgia
Nostalgia and horizons of knowledge
Philosophical or neurological approaches to the experience of nostalgia
The utility of nostalgia (for example in relation to community cohesion or group or individual identities)
Nostalgia and the material world
Nostalgia and the symbolic world
Submission Details
Interested contributors should submit an abstract (250–300 words) and a short biographical note to the editors at simon.winlow@northumbria.ac.uk and tkuld@oslomet.no by 1 August 2025. The deadline for full submissions (max. 9000 words) is 15 November 2025.
Journal of Extreme Anthropology is an international, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary and indexed journal specializing in extreme subjects, practices and theory. Articles are published Online First and may thus appear individually prior to the full issue. For submission and author guidelines, please visit: https://journals.uio.no/JEA
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