Promise of Nostalgia

<p>The Promise of Nostalgia analyses a range of texts – including <i>The Virgin Suicides</i> both the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides’ and Sofia Coppola’s screen adaptation<i></i> photography of Detroit’s ‘abandoned spaces’ and blogger Tavi Gevinson's media output – to explore nostalgia as a prominent affect in contemporary American cultural production. </p><p></p><p>Counter to the prevalent caricature of nostalgia as anti-future the book proposes a more nuanced reading of its stakes and meanings. Instead of understanding it as evidence of the absence of utopia it contends that there is a masked utopian impulse in this nostalgia ‘mode’ and critical potential in what has typically been dismissed as ideological. </p><p></p><p>This book will be of interest to scholars graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students interested in contemporary culture cultural theory media studies the Frankfurt School utopian studies and American literature and culture.</p><p></p>