The Promise of Nostalgia: Reminiscence, Longing and Hope in Contemporary American Culture

The Promise of Nostalgia analyses a range of texts including The Virgin Suicides, both the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides and Sofia Coppolas screen adaptation, photography of Detroits abandoned spaces, and blogger Tavi Gevinson's media output to explore nostalgia as a prominent affect in contemporary American cultural production.

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.

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.