Call for papers for special issue: Nostalgia(s) in media

Nostalgia(s) in Media

Guest Editors: Mozahir Salomão Bruck (PUC Minas) and James Cisneros (Université de Montréal)

We are living in nostalgic times. Since Johannes Hofer invented the neologism in his medical thesis of 1688, the term nostalgia has resurfaced in different periods to designate distinct kinds of malaises and sentiments: first, an affliction suffered by those that were far from home; then, with Romanticism, a melancholic longing for an irretrievable past; since the 1970s, a staple of popular culture; and today an attachment to a past that has emerged in a wide variety of cultural products and political discourses.

Accruing at times of rapid change or modernization, nostalgia, a “historical emotion” that can be “restorative” or “reflective” (Boym, 2001), has taken on multiple modalities that span from reactionary to progressive, even taking on utopian shadings (Pickering and Keightley, 2006). Alongside these historical shifts in the understanding of nostalgia are cultural and linguistic variations—Heimweh, mal du pays, homesickness, saudade—and an emerging geography of local and global perspectives on loss (Bonnett, 2010).

Today, the explosion of nostalgia has made it an important topic of discussion across academic disciplines, as is evident in the recently released The Routledge Handbook of Nostalgia (Becker and Trigg, 2024), especially in areas related to media studies and cultural production. Nostalgia encounters media in multiple ways: in stories—whether literary or audiovisual—of exile, of a return (nostos) home whose repeated deferral brings suffering (astos); in the adaptation and reworkings of well-known novels or popular films and television shows from previous generations (Cook, 1996); in the recuperation of old styles and “retro” aesthetics (Guffey, 2006); in the resurgence of analog media (vinyl records) and technologies (typewriters, record players), and old electronic games and devices like Atari or PacMan (Lizardi, 2015); in the longing for the early days of the world wide web, and for earlier iterations of digital technology (Niemeyer, 2014); in the access to audiovisual archives related to art, fashion, history, music through online streaming sites like YouTube or Netflix (Pallister, 2019).

In this issue, we invite articles that consider how nostalgia is mediated in different historical periods and distinct geographies. How are expressions of nostalgia modulated by a medium’s connectivity, material support, simulation of presence? How do different media code nostalgia and other affective tonalities? How do mediations between places blur the differences between cultures? Between locations situations of inequality? What effect do media interactions—or intermedial dialogues—have on nostalgia?

 

Suggested Angles for Submission

Without intending to limit the proposals to be submitted, the following are also suggested as possible angles:

• The emergence of nostalgic inscriptions in media textualities;
• Temporal reversibility in nostalgic narratives;
• Intermediality processes and their temporal connections;
• Post-colonial perspectives on nostalgia;
• Media, memory, and nostalgia;
• Nostalgia and social networks;
• Analog nostalgia, digital nostalgia;
• Contemporary cinema and television series;
• Nostalgia industries: economy, value, and affect.

References:

Becker, T., & Trigg, D. (2024). The Routledge Handbook of Nostalgia. Routledge.

Bonnett, A. (2010). The geography of nostalgia: Global and local perspectives on modernity and loss. Routledge.

Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. Basic Books.

Cisneros, J. (2019). Nostalgia das mídias no cinema latino-americano contemporâneo. In M. Arbex, M. P. Vieira, & T. F. N. Diniz (Eds.), Escrita, som, imagem (pp. 123–145). Fino Traço Editora. (Assumi uma página inicial e final para completar o formato, o que deve ser verificado na obra original).

Cook, P. (1996). Authorship and nostalgia. Screen, 37(1). (Assumi que o artigo não tinha páginas especificadas, o que deve ser verificado).

Guffey, E. (2006). Retro: The culture of revival. Reaktion.

Habib, A. (2022). Introduction. Retour vers la nostalgie. Intermédialités. Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques, (39). (Assumi que o artigo não tinha páginas especificadas, o que deve ser verificado).

Lizardi, R. (2015). Mediated nostalgia: Individual memory and contemporary mass media. Lexington Books.

Musse, C. F., Medeiros, T., & Henriques, R. (2020). Nostalgia e memória no tempo das mídias. Florianópolis: Editora Insular.

Niemeyer, K. (Ed.). (2014). Media and nostalgia: Yearning for the past, present and future. Macmillan Memory Studies.

Niemeyer, K. (2024). Digital nostalgias. In T. Becker & D. Trigg (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of nostalgia. Routledge.

Niemeyer, K., Fantin, E., & Févry, S. (2021). Nostalgies contemporaines: Médias, cultures et technologies. Presses universitaires du Septentrion.

Pallister, K. (Ed.). (2019). Netflix nostalgia: Streaming the past on demand. Lexington Books.

Pickering, M., & Keightley, E. (2006). The modalities of nostalgia. Current Sociology, 54(6), 919–941.

Ribeiro, A. P. G. (2018). Mercado da nostalgia e narrativas audiovisuais. E-Compós, 21(3), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.30962/ec.1491

Santa Cruz, L., & Ferraz, T. (Orgs.). (2018). Nostalgias e mídia: no caleidoscópio do tempo. Rio de Janeiro: E-Papers.

Check the schedule:

The call for papers is open until February 16, 2026, and the Dossier is expected to be published in June 2026. The journal will also accept articles on open topics, which can be submitted on a rolling basis (continuous flow). Submissions to the journal are accepted from the following authors:

• Doctors (Ph.D. holders);

• Doctoral candidates (Ph.D. students);

• Masters (M.A. holders);

• Master's candidates (M.A. students) in co-authorship with Doctors (Ph.D. holders).

The editorial guidelines are published at: http://periodicos.pucminas.br/index.php/dispositiva/about/submissions.