Call for Papers: Political Nostalgias Past and Present: North America
Edited by: Amy Cooter, Jennifer Cowe and Sarah Aziz
Overview
Political Nostalgias Past and Present: North America is an edited volume that examines the power, persistence, and political consequences of longing for the past. Across ideological traditions and geographic contexts, nostalgia has become a potent force in contemporary political life. It animates campaigns, shapes collective memory, informs policy debates, and structures individual identities. From invocations of “golden ages” and national rebirth to restorative visions of lost sovereignty, order, or moral clarity, political nostalgia is mobilized in ways that both unify and divide and create opportunities to superficially justify political violence.
This volume seeks to explore nostalgia as a political resource—strategically deployed, culturally mediated, emotionally experienced, and institutionally embedded. We are particularly interested in how political nostalgias operate across time and space: how they are constructed, whose pasts are centered or marginalized, how they circulate through media and cultural forms, and how they influence democratic and authoritarian projects alike.
Contributors are invited to engage with nostalgia as theory, method, discourse, affect, or practice. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches that situate political nostalgia within broader debates about memory, temporality, identity, nationalism, populism, colonialism, race, gender, religion, and political economy. The volume aims to bring together diverse perspectives to illuminate how competing visions of the past shape present political struggles and imagined futures.
Themes and Topics
We welcome chapters that critically engage with (but are not limited to) the following themes:
Theoretical approaches to nostalgia in political thought
Nostalgia, memory, and national identity
Populism and the politics of “lost greatness”
Postcolonial and decolonial critiques of political nostalgia
Gendered and racialized dimensions of nostalgic politics
Religious traditionalism and mythic pasts
Nostalgia in authoritarian and democratic movements
Diasporic, transnational, and migrant nostalgias
Media, digital culture, and the circulation of nostalgic narratives
Comparative, global, and non-Western perspectives are especially encouraged.
Submission Guidelines
We welcome contributions from scholars, researchers, graduate students, and practitioners across a wide range of disciplines, including political science, history,
sociology, anthropology, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, religious studies, law, philosophy, literature, psychology, and related fields.
Chapters should be 4,000–6,000 words, inclusive of references and footnotes.
All submissions must be original work not previously published or under review elsewhere.
Manuscripts should follow Chicago style for citations and formatting and be submitted in Word or PDF format.
Provisional proposal deadline May 31st, 2026
Provisional acceptance date August 31st, 2026
Please submit an abstract of approximately 250–300 words along with a brief biographical note (100–150 words) to PoliticalNostalgias@gmail.com.
