The Objects of Nostalgia: Embedded Historical Narratives

Abstract

From where does the power of the historicised object derive? A seemingly innate object or an over embellished item can possess a prevailing narrative of nostalgia and the past. The embedded narrative or broader discourse of an object has the potential to command social and cultural obligations; they can offer a warm nurturing embrace across generations or reveal political and anthropological insights into a long gone era. The possibilities for historical analysis are seemingly endless and history educators in universities and schools have been using objects in the classroom as a means for engaging students and developing skills. The objects teachers use might vary from a Roman coin to a domestic object but in each case the teacher can draw from the original embedded narratives as well as those attached to the object in the process of its preservation. In this paper I will examine the stories of four objects as a means to explore the pedagogical and epistemological value of this practice with a particular focus on nostalgia. These include objects embedded narratives of generational care and survival, imagined objects, memory assemblages and finally a story about the keeping of objects. By exploring objects as windows into the past that are marked by nostalgia and personal narratives we can also think about the teaching of history and questions of historical thinking and the scholarship of teaching and learning in the discipline. By embracing the notion of the historian self as a key to understanding historical practice and applying historical thinking, these types of objects can be especially useful for history educators.