Fernando Nogueira Lopes Prospectus Defense

Fernando Nogueira Lopes will be defending his prospectus. Title: “Framing the Virtual Past: A Phenomenological Study of Nostalgia and Its Cinematic Aura” Abstract: Nostalgia can be a refuge in times of quick change and upheaval. It is a bittersweet indulgence in the inertness of the past that causes one to mourn the impossibility of returning in time yet also be appreciative of having had those experiences. Is wishing to revert to the past regressive delusion or a site for meaning and the construction of identity? Svetlana Boym argues that nostalgia is a particularly Modern disease. Coined in 1688 by medical student Johannes Hofer, the word was first used to describe a pathology observed in soldiers who fell into depression after being stationed far from home. My dissertation argues that nostalgia is not just an exclusively Modern sentiment, but indicates a more fundamental structure of ambiguity in regards to temporal experience, found in words such as the Portuguese ‘saudade,’ the Welsh ‘hiraeth,’ and the German ‘Sehnsucht.’ Nostalgia has three dimensions which these words emphasize differently, yet all respond to the irreversibility of time and finitude. The first dimension is personal history; nostalgia is about the experiences one reminisces upon in the construction of autobiographical memory. Secondly, nostalgia draws on collective history, the sense of a social identity and shared experiences that binds communities. Thirdly, and most fundamentally, nostalgia can be directed at existence itself—the sense of having a history tout court—what has been termed ontological nostalgia. The first chapter of the dissertation is an investigation into the philosophy and the history of nostalgia, arguing that the word ‘nostalgia’ is one among many others in different languages which are responses to this complex interplay between philosophical and historical modes of interpreting temporal experience. The second chapter asks whether nostalgia can come in virtuous and vicious forms in an exploration of the moral psychology of nostalgia and how it relates to affects such as regret, anxiety and hope. The third chapter turns to one of the central issues of the dissertation and one that is not as explored in the literature, that of what film nostalgia is and how film as a medium represents nostalgia and enriches both the experience and descriptions of it. For this, I argue that nostalgia is reflected in film on three levels: at the level of medium, form and content. Film nostalgia as medium relates to how film packages bits of reality in a repayable medium and thus makes manifest the irreversibility of time and the uniqueness of every event. At the level of form, film engages in nostalgia through nostalgic artifices such as the use of color, music and atmosphere. Lastly, film can portray nostalgia through narrative arcs, episodes and cycles. The fourth chapter utilizes this vocabulary constructed throughout the thesis to analyze 4 films which all emphasize different aspects of nostalgia and induce it through particular modes of eliciting and representing nostalgia.

When 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm on 12 August 2026
Building STH 541