Screening Nostalgia provides a cogent summary of the history of America's love affair with nostalgia as well as offering useful examples of how to mobilize nostalgia in critically sophisticated ways. The text is engaging and accessible and should have wide appeal, particularly among scholars and students of film and American cultural history." . Southwest Journal of Cultures

"In this fascinating in-depth study of the impact of nostalgia on contemporary American cinema, Christine Sprengler unpicks the history of the concept and explores its significance in theory and practice. She offers a lucid analysis of the development of nostalgia in American society and culture, navigating a path through the key debates and aligning herself with recent attempts to recuperate its critical potential. This journey opens up the myriad permutations of nostalgia across visual and material culture and their interface with cinema, with the 1950s emerging as a privileged moment. Four case studies (Sin City, Far From Heaven, The Aviator and The Good German) analyse the ways in which aspects of visual design such as props, costume and colour contribute to the nostalgic aesthetic, allowing for both critical distance and emotion. Written with verve, style and impressive attention to detail, Screening Nostalgia is an invaluable addition to existing scholarship. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the ways in which we access the past through cinema." . Pam Cook, Professor Emerita in Film, University of Southampton"

"In this fascinating in-depth study of the impact of nostalgia on contemporary American cinema, Christine Sprengler unpicks the history of the concept and explores its significance in theory and practice. She offers a lucid analysis of the development of nostalgia in American society and culture, navigating a path through the key debates and aligning herself with recent attempts to recuperate its critical potential. This journey opens up the myriad permutations of nostalgia across visual and material culture and their interface with cinema, with the 1950s emerging as a privileged moment. Four case studies (Sin City, Far From Heaven, The Aviator and The Good German) analyse the ways in which aspects of visual design such as props, costume and colour contribute to the nostalgic aesthetic, allowing for both critical distance and emotion. Written with verve, style and impressive attention to detail, Screening Nostalgia is an invaluable addition to existing scholarship. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the ways in which we access the past through cinema." * Pam Cook, Professor Emerita in Film, University of Southampton

The 1950s as a cultural concept has surged with astonishing force over the last half century. Cultural and political investment in the postwar era has been heavily determined by the desires, anxieties, ideologies, and technologies of the contexts in which they surface. In this book author Christine Sprengler explores how contextualizing factors shaped the 1950s in different ways, and how cinematic representations spearheaded, challenged, or intervened in our cultural memories of the era. Fractured Fifties: The Cinematic Periodization and Evolution of a Decade presents a two-pronged argument— that cinema helped define the 1950s by contributing in considerable and meaningful ways to the process of periodization and subsequently a common conception of the decade, and that cinema itself has fractured our understanding of the 1950s. Fractured Fifties challenges a reductive and fairly cohesive set of tropes with a complex amalgam of representations that also intervene in debates about historiography, historicity, cultural memory, mediation, nostalgia, and periodization. Ultimately, Sprengler posits that cinema has complicated our sense of the 1950s, yielding in the process a series of 1950s types or kinds, (e.g., The Leave it to Beaver Fifties, The Jukebox Fifties, and The Cold War Fifties, The Retromediated Fifties) as well as a wealth of critical insights into myriad pasts, presents, and the evolving relationships between them.

The 1950s as a cultural concept has surged with astonishing force over the last half century. Cultural and political investment in the postwar era has been heavily determined by the desires, anxieties, ideologies, and technologies of the contexts in which they surface. In this book author Christine Sprengler explores how contextualizing factors shaped the 1950s in different ways, and how cinematic representations spearheaded, challenged, or intervened in our cultural memories of the era. Fractured Fifties: The Cinematic Periodization and Evolution of a Decade presents a two-pronged argument— that cinema helped define the 1950s by contributing in considerable and meaningful ways to the process of periodization and subsequently a common conception of the decade, and that cinema itself has fractured our understanding of the 1950s. Fractured Fifties challenges a reductive and fairly cohesive set of tropes with a complex amalgam of representations that also intervene in debates about historiography, historicity, cultural memory, mediation, nostalgia, and periodization. Ultimately, Sprengler posits that cinema has complicated our sense of the 1950s, yielding in the process a series of 1950s types or kinds, (e.g., The Leave it to Beaver Fifties, The Jukebox Fifties, and The Cold War Fifties, The Retromediated Fifties) as well as a wealth of critical insights into myriad pasts, presents, and the evolving relationships between them.