Call for Papers

Nostalgia

Spring 2013

What is wrong with nostalgia? It is clearly nourished in different ways and at different times in the life of a culture; others hold out obstinately against it. (Contemporary American politics are a case in point.) Yet it is not nostalgia per se, but its crippling effects that can be deplored. The dictionary defines nostalgia as "a form of melancholia caused by prolonged absence from one's home or country"; as the past is a foreign country, we are liable to be wracked by this "severe homesickness." Yet melancholia is not simply a disease. Historic preservation, by its very nature, invites nostalgia to cohabit with an awareness of contemporary needs. A local or small nostalgia by an individual, however, has little to do with a public use of some atavistic, yet maybe sustaining, recall of the past.

This issue will explore the role of nostalgia in preservation: theoretically, as an approach to that "melancholy," its sustaining as well as its debilitating effects; also, case studies of buildings or landscapes that explore nostalgia effectively, compellingly, and skeptically, even derisively. We look for a range of topics, and a questioning approach that brings to the specific field of historic preservation a new perspective. There is, in fact, a considerable literature on melancholy, but this issue needs to focus specifically and closely on what Change Over Time can contribute.

Interpretation and Display

Fall 2013

The interpretation and display of all built heritage address the critical questions of how should we experience a site, how does intervention affect what we see, what we feel, and what we know, and how can display promote an effective and active dialog between past and present? All preservation is a critical act that results in the conscious production of "heritage." As an activity of mediation between the past and the present, conservation is ultimately responsible for what the viewer experiences about the past. Past and current practice has been concerned with finding an acceptable balance between protecting the historical and documentary values inherent in the physical form and fabric, and the aesthetic values implicit in the original work and its reshaping through weathering and alterations. While such questions have been fundamental to conservation/preservation theory and practice, new approaches and new sites are challenging our response to these questions.

To encourage theoretical discourse, the Fall 2013 issue of Change Over Time will focus on the interpretation and display of built heritage. Papers are encouraged that explore theoretical and practical positions and especially the gaps between these two growing bodies of work for all forms of built heritage.

Articles are generally restricted to 7,500 or fewer words (the approximate equivalent to thirty pages of double-spaced, twelve-point type) and may include up to ten images. The deadline for submission of manuscripts for the Spring 2013 Nostalgia issue is August 1, 2012 and September 1, 2012 for the Fall 2013 issue on Interpretation and Display. Guidelines for authors may be requested from Meredith Keller (cot@design.upenn.edu), to whom manuscripts should also be submitted. For further information please visit cot.pennpress.org.