Historical Fictions Research Network (HFRN): Series Editors Global Historical Fictions (Brill), Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir, Jerome de Groot, Dorothea Flothow, Siobhan O’Connor, and Stephanie Russo (Web)
Time: 28.11.2026
Venue: Virtual space
Proposals by: 01.10.2026
Globally, the last years have been dominated by a wide-spread feeling of nostalgia, “a bittersweet longing for former times” (Niemeyer 2014: 1), in which the world still seemed to be ‘better’, safer and more colourful than our tumultuous and fast-changing present (see e.g. Bauman 2017; Gaston & Hilhorst 2018; Jacobsen 2020). This feeling has been traced back to ever-faster technological changes and the accompanying feeling of insecurity, as well as to international developments which have severely affected and undermined the existing world order and international co-operation. The emerging feeling of nostalgia is often connected to a very specific period in the respective national past, a “‘prelapsarian’” Golden Age, a mythic, glorious time when the nation was still great (see Henneböhl 2023: 50). Thus, the US-American MAGA movement repeatedly conjures up images of the post-WWII era, when the US had just won a major war and experienced a period of economic well-being (see Krieg 2016). On the other side of the former East-West divide, in the countries of the former Soviet block, there is also a wide-spread longing for the years of Communism, when the world was presumed safer and more just (see Jeffery & Váradi 2026). In the former GDR, this often takes the form of ‘Ostalgie’; while in Russian politics, cherished memories of the Soviet Union are utilised to justify the war against Ukraine. A third international example can be found in India where President Modi’s policy of Hindu nationalism channels ideas of a glorious period of Hindu rule that preceded conquests by first Muslim and then European invaders (see Jaffrelot & Schoch 2021: ch 1).
These examples highlight problems intrinsic to notions of a national ‘Golden Age’: they can be easily manipulated to political ends as demonstrated by the strategies of contemporary populists, who conflate mythic pasts with conservative or nationalist agendas. This evocation of such imagined pasts often consciously excludes those absent from their perceived flourishings – for example, immigrants, people of colour, women, or men not fitting the martial stereotype often associated with the idea of a Golden Age. Read more … (PDF)
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