Etymologically, the word ‘nostalgia’ comes from the
Greek nóstos, ‘a return home,’ and álgos, ‘pain.’ Introduced as a medical term for homesickness in the 17th
century, nostalgia first acquired a broader spectrum
of signification in 19th century France, when authors
like Balzac and Baudelaire used it do designate a diffuse type of longing that could not simply be resolved
by going home. Dislodged from its medical origins,
nostalgia came to refer to a longing aimed not only at
physical places, but also bygone eras, deceased loved
ones, and more ill-defined objects considered to be
lost.
Gradual extension from a physical condition to a psychological state of mind charged with symbolic value allowed nostalgia to become virulent in a variety
of both literary and theoretical discourses. Svetlana
Boym (2001) argues that the nostalgic desire for origins is at “the very core of the modern condition.”
Within academia, the last fifty years have witnessed an
unprecedented suspicion of origins and an attack on
such simple notions as ‘the authentic.’ When anti-essentialism is the norm, nostalgia becomes suspicious, leading many to supplement it with irony so as to establish a
manner of critical distance.
If nostalgic feelings constitute the image of their cherished object, it is all too easy to denounce these objects
as idealizations; but still one could ask whether not only
nostalgic longing but also ironic appropriation and hybridization are driven by comparable desires to reconcile
with the lost. While, generally, nostalgia may be seen as
normatively conservative, perhaps it is analytically inevitable.
Nostalgia isn’t
what it used to be
Poetologies of and Theory as Nostalgia
International Conference | April 17–18, 2015
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International
Conference
International
Conference
International
Conference
International
Conference
April
17–18, 2015
April 17–18,
2015
International
Conference
April
17–18,
April
17–18,2015
2015
April 17–18, 2015
Freie Universität
Freie Universität
Berlin Berlin
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FreieUniversität
UniversitätBerlin
Berlin
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Freie Universität Berlin
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Poetologies of and Theory as Nostalgia
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www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
International Conference
April 17–18, 2015
Keynote: Nicholas Dames
Freie Universität Berlin
Seminarzentrum
Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
14195 Berlin
Room L 116
Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies
www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
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Freie
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Freie
Universität
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International
Conference
Freie
Universität
International
Conference
International
Conference
Freie
Universität
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International
Conference
Seminarzentrum
Seminarzentrum
April
17–18,
2015
April
17–18,
2015
Seminarzentrum
April
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2015
Seminarzentrum
April
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Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies
www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
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Freie Universität Berlin
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www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
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Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be
Poetologies of and Theory as Nostalgia
International Conference
April 17–18, 2015
Keynote: Nicholas Dames
Freie Universität
Universität Berlin
Berlin
Seminarzentrum
Seminarzentrum
Otto-von-Simson-Str.
Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
26
14195 Berlin
Berlin
Room LL 116
116
Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies
www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be
Poetologies of and Theory as Nostalgia
International Conference
April 17–18, 2015
Keynote: Nicholas Dames
Freie Universität Berlin
Seminarzentrum
Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
14195 Berlin
Room L 116
Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies
www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be
Poetologies of and Theory as Nostalgia
Host:
Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School
of Literary Studies
www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
Organizers:
Mikołaj Golubiewski, Johannes Kleine,
Roman Kuhn, Dennis Schep
International Conference
April 17–18, 2015
Venue:
Freie Universität Berlin
Seminarzentrum
Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
14195 Berlin-Dahlem
Room L116
Keynote: Nicholas Dames
Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies
www.fsgs.fu-berlin.de
Freie Universität Berlin
Seminarzentrum
Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
14195 Berlin
Room L 116
Friday, April 17th, 2015
13.00–13.15
Welcome & Introduction
13.15–15.45
Panel 1: Framing Nostalgia
Chair: Anja Ketterl
Tabea Meurer (Münster)
Longing for Power? Reflections on Nostalgia,
Past Presencing, and the Construction of Élites
Rana R. Siblini (Münster)
Reading Pre-modern Arabic Poetry through
Nostalgia
Tobias Becker (London)
Nostalgia and the Historians; The Resurgence
of the Past and the ‘Nostalgia Wave’ in the 1970s
Sylwia D. Chrostowska (Toronto)
On the Trail of Nostalgia: A History in Critique
Jozsef Krupp (Budapest)
Philology and Nostalgia
15.45–16.15
Coffee-Break
16.15–18.15
Panel 2: Poetic Longing – Perfor-
ming Nostalgia in Literature (1)
Chair: Bernhard Metz
Anton Pluschke (Princeton)
“Wer an zurück denkt, der will zurück.” The
World in Fontane and Heidegger
Ana-Maria Schlupp (Berlin)
Nostalgic Longing for a Place Unknown. About
Jan Koneffkes Eine nie vergessene Geschichte
Aleksandra Kremer (Warsaw)
The Performance of Nostalgia in the Poetry of
Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki
Mariella C. Scheer (Berlin)
Memory is Truth, Nostalgia is Forgery?
The Creative Potential of Nostalgic
Memory in Literature
13.30-15.00 Panel 4: (Post-)Transformation and Nostalgia
Chair: Thomas Hardtke
Saturday, April 18th, 2015
Erica Lombard (Oxford)
An Awkward Ache: Nostalgic White Writing in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Ksenia Robbe (Leiden)
Decolonizing Transformation: Nostalgia
and Complicity in Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The
Big Green Tent and Antjie Krog’s A Change of
Tongue
Caspar Battegay (Lausanne)
Nostalgia for the Storyteller. Joseph Roth’s
Narratology
10.00–12.30 Panel 3: Media of/and Nostalgia
15.00–16.00 Coffee-Break
18.15–19.00
Wine-Reception
19.00 Keynote-Lecture
Nicholas Dames (New York)
Rethinking Nostalgia and Pleasure:
The Example of the 1970s
Chair: Alesya Raskuratova
Mirjam Kappes (Cologne)
Mediated Nostalgia(s):
Memory and Mass Media in the Digital Age
Wolfgang Hottner (New Haven)
Winter Gardens. Space, Memoria and
Images in Barthes and Proust
Katharina Greven (Bayreuth)
Longing for a New Home: The ‘Fantasy Africa’
of the German Art Patron Ulli Beier and his
Wife Georgina Beier in their Archive
Nout Van Den Neste (Lisbon)
Remembering Portugal: Discourses of
Portuguese Nostalgia in Saudade and Fado
Music
Antoni Michnik (Warsaw)
‘Borrowed Nostalgia for the Unremembered
80‘s’ - James Murphy, Memory and Retromania
12.30–13.30
Lunch-Break
16.00–18.00 Panel 5: Poetic Longing – Perfor- ming Nostalgia in Literature (2)
Chair: Clemens Dirmhirn
Qin Wang (New York)
How not to be Nostalgic of the Future: Lu
Xun’s Homeland and the Politics of Modernity
of the May Fourth Movement in China
Jeffrey Champlin (New York)
“Old-fashioned procreation”: Homunculus
and Nostalgia for the Body in Faust II
Oliver Völker (Frankfurt)
“Dead and gone.” Aesthetics of Loss in T.C.
Boyles A Friend of the Earth
Federico Dal Bo (Berlin)
Going Home When “That Agony Returns”;
Primo Levi’s Ad Ora Incerta and His Tragic
Nóstos from the Camps
19.00
Conference-Dinner