[Commlist] genre/nostalgia 2021 - conference

*Registration is now open for genre/nostalgia 2021*

*An online film and television studies conference, University of 
Hertfordshire, January 5&6 2021*

**

*A full conference schedule and registration details can be found here 
<https://www.herts.ac.uk/research/groups-and-units/media-research-group/genrenostalgia-2021> 
*

Registration is free but places are limited. Much of the conference will 
be recorded and available after the event.

Please address queries to the event organisers: Dr Shellie McMurdo 
<mailto:(s.mcmurdo2 /at/ herts.ac.uk)>, Dr Laura Mee 
<mailto:(l.mee2 /at/ herts.ac.uk)>, Dr Caitlin Shaw <mailto:(c.shaw3 /at/ herts.ac.uk)>

**

*Keynote speaker: Dr Kate Egan, Northumbria University: ‘Nostalgia for 
pre-digital scares: childhood memories, horror and 35mm'*

**

Film and TV genres and nostalgia have long been intertwined. 
Fundamentally, both are rooted in the practice of creatively recycling 
and adapting modes of the past; Steve Neale’s (1990) assertion that 
genres are processes of repetition and variation is also applicable to 
many films and programmes which reimagine historical events, past eras, 
earlier styles and classic works of literature. Period dramas regularly 
cite the codes and conventions of past genres as a means of triggering 
collective memories of an era, while for multiple other film and TV 
genres, the past is a key component: for instance, science fiction might 
depict the past as a function of time travel, while the Western is 
founded on its 19^th century American frontier setting, and gothic 
horror is often associated with Victorian England or based on fin de 
siècle literature.

Relationships between genre and nostalgia are regularly explored in 
isolated studies, while broader publications and events often focus on 
one or the other. However, the focus is rarely on the relationship and 
interaction between them. This may in part be due to lingering doubts on 
the value of exploring it. When, in 1991, Fredric Jameson identified 
what he called ‘the nostalgia film’, he cited genre texts like the 
neo-noir /Chinatown /(Roman Polanski, 1974) as evidence of ‘the waning 
of our historicity’ (1991: 21). In their repetition of previously 
mediated images, it was, to a large extent, the /genericity /of films 
like these which so concerned Jameson and led him to judge them as 
lacking in historically critical depth. This perspective has to some 
extent persisted in studies of period and historical dramas, where 
engagements with the past in popular genres like horror, comedy and 
science fiction are considered less ‘serious’ or historically 
significant. Meanwhile, Jameson’s reading of postmodern nostalgia as 
inherently regressive, despite being subsequently questioned (see, for 
instance, Hutcheon 2000; Dika 2003), has encouraged some studies to look 
sceptically on the presence of nostalgia, reading it as a more or less 
straightforward indicator of longing for a simplified, comforting past 
rather than as a complex phenomenon.

Yet, links between genre and nostalgia have only deepened in the 
increasingly media-saturated 21^st century. More genre films and 
programmes have opted for past settings, and more period dramas, in 
their style of historical adaptation, have rejected traditional notions 
of ‘authenticity’ in favour of self-reflexive genericity. As such, this 
one-day symposium, which we hope will lead to the development of an 
active research network, seeks to explore connections between film and 
television genres and nostalgia, memory and other manifestations of the 
past. The aim is to facilitate dialogue between these two rich and 
increasingly interconnected areas of study, and to connect scholars at 
all levels working in these areas.

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