Project information
Doctoral student
Beatriz Carlsson Pecharromán
Supervisor
Niklas Salmose
Timetable
September 2022 – June 2026
Subject
Comparative literature, Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
More about the project
Our period in history is often described as a particularly nostalgic one: from internet aesthetics and popular culture to political campaigns, nostalgic tropes have become ubiquitous. According to some scholars this rise in nostalgic sentiment is an effect of late-stage capitalism and globalisation, of a world obsessed with progress and movement. Furthermore, the roots of contemporary nostalgia tend to be located at the rise of industry and capitalism, two phenomena inextricably connected to Western imperialism.
Thus, while nostalgia is a potentially universal experience, it is also culturally determined, and its expression has become imbued with Western epistemes and aesthetics. As a result, the aesthetics of nostalgia have become highly ambivalent, marked by motifs that originate from Western imperialism (such as pastoral landscapes or desert islands) as well as from universal human experiences (such as childhood or the home).
The aim of this project is to explore how nostalgic motifs travel across borders and are altered in the process through the comparative analysis of such motifs in novels originating from various cultures. Due to the influence of Western imperialism on the aesthetics of nostalgia, the analysis will take a postcolonial perspective to better understand the dynamic between imperial discourse and nostalgic motifs. The ambivalent aesthetics of nostalgia raises the question: can similarities in the literary expression of nostalgia be explained by the universality of nostalgia, or are they a result of globalisation?
The project is part of the research in:
