Reading & Composition
NOSTALGIA: ‘IT ISN’T WHAT IT USED BE’
Although originally coined as a medical condition (literally “homesickness”), nostalgia has come to describe a usually harmless, and deeply sentimental, longing for the past. In this class, we’ll think about the transformation of this concept from the medical to the emotional, as well as its connection to ideas of both home and history. Just how harmless is nostalgia? Does nostalgia keep us grounded and attached to where we come from or does its sentimentality necessarily distort our vision? What is it about an unattainable time or place that seems so appealing? By reading texts and viewing films that either represent nostalgia at work or are clearly employing a nostalgic lens, we’ll think, discuss, and write about what provokes nostalgia and why.
Texts and films will include:
Homer, Odyssey
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (selections)
Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park
Gary Ross, Pleasantville
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
And a course reader will additionally include selections from: Ovid, Hesiod, Theocritus, Joachim Du Bellay, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, Novalis, Alfred Lord Tennyson, various Pre-Raphaelites, and Sigmund Freud.