Exploring Nostalgia: Sad, Bad, Mad and Sweet

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. Sad, Bad, Mad, and Sweet considers nostalgia as a force that shapes culture, the self, and the state. It describes ways in which the nostalgic impulse is co-opted, created, questioned, and championed from a diverse array of disciplinary perspectives. Nostalgia as feeling is pivotal in the construction and contradiction of identity; as tool it is vital in the morphing and moulding of history. From post-colonial, to post-Soviet, to post-national views of home and the past, to the sculpting of story itself, this volume asks questions about how we remember and what those memories might offer. The chapters seek to warn and reassure, to imagine and to restrain; they all acknowledge the power of this bitter and sweet longing for something lost - whether real or imagined - and explore the ways in which nostalgia shapes the stories we tell about ourselves. The volume is an important contribution to the ways in which this multifaceted, much-maligned sentiment is considered.