The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the different ways in which the past remains present in Western popular culture in the twenty-first century. It combines theoretical analyses with case study-based chapters focusing on examples from Britain, the US, and Germany, among other countries. In doing so, it pushes beyond a simplistic and monolithic conception of what ‘nostalgia’ is to allow for a more nuanced and varied conceptualisation of this phenomenon, and to also incorporate other ways of understanding the invoking or inclusion of different histories within cultural objects, formats, and practices. Tobias Becker is a Visiting Professor of Modern History at Freie Universität Berlin. He has published widely on the history of popular culture and nostalgia. His most recent books include Popular Culture in Western Europe since 1800: A Student‘s Guide (2023) and Yesterday: A New History of Nostalgia (2023). Dion Georgiou is a contemporary historian of environments, temporality and memory, popular culture, and conflict. He completed his PhD at Queen Mary University of London in 2016 and has since worked at the University of Chichester, King’s College London, and the University of Kent. He currently runs the Substack newsletter The Academic Bubble.