Nostalgia Trap

Katrinell Davis is an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University and the author of two incredible books: Hard Work is Not Enough: Gender and Racial Inequality in an Urban Workspace (2016) and Tainted Tap: Flint’s Journey from Crisis to Recovery (2021). In this conversation, we explore how different populations, from Black women bus drivers in San Francisco to the working class residents of Flint, Michigan, face extraordinary socioeconomic constraints, and how these communities respond, resist, and live joyously in the face of capitalism’s relentless attacks.

Abraham Lincoln: Working class hero? Holy Angel of Liberation? Capitalist collaborator? Matthew Stanley has some ideas for us. As an associate professor of history at Albany State University, his work focuses on how we remember the Civil War, and why that matters. In this conversation we discuss his latest book, Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War, which explores the diverse ways that historical memories and images of war function within radical political movements.

This week Justin and I watch the HBO documentary Q: Into the Storm, and share our ideas about the QAnon phenomenon, from the sewers of 8chan to the hordes of Q-Tubers amplifying its ideas, paying special attention to the malevolent father-son duo Jim and Ron Watkins, who hijacked the brain of an American president. What is this new technological/psychological terrain we inhabit? And where is the rabbit hole leading us? For full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap. 

What does it mean to “eat like a man”? This week’s guest, Emily J.H. Contois, is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa and the author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture. In this conversation, she explains how the concept of “dude food” became a powerful branding strategy in Great Recession America, as food production and consumption became central sites in the contest over masculinity and identity.

This week Claudia joins us to survey two of Martin Scorsese’s earliest films, Mean Streets (1973) and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), both of which express the lived experiences of working class Americans in often surprising ways. We talk about how these films depict class mobility and ethnic tribalism, violence (both economic and domestic), the multidimensional traps of gender,  and the sometimes impossible moral challenges faced by people struggling to survive in the dark terrain of 1970s America. Subscribe for the full episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Kyle Burke is an assistant professor of history and Co-Coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Hartwick College. In this conversation, he discusses his book Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War, which explores how an international network of right-wing individuals and organizations supported anticommunist guerrillas throughout the global south from the 1950s to the 1980s. Burke helps us trace the line between vigilante and state violence, and puts contemporary right-wing movements like Qanon and the January 6th Capitol siege in the wider context of American anticommunism.

Karina Moreno is an associate professor in the department of urban policy and planning at Hunter College. She joins us to discuss her latest piece in Jacobin, which surveys the Biden administration’s “new” immigration policies, finding continuity with decades of criminalization and militarization along the Southern border. With an immigration system designed entirely to serve the needs of capital, and an ugly political discourse to support it, how can we reimagine our collective ideas about nations, borders, and security?

This week, Claudia and I talk about 3 of our favorite films, the “acid noirs”: The Long Goodbye (1973), The Big Lebowski (1998), and Inherent Vice (2014). United in theme and tone, the films explore the history of post-1960s Los Angeles by both indulging and subverting the tropes of noir detective stories. Our conversation focuses on how the films’ central character(s), Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould), the Dude (Jeff Bridges), and Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), simultaneously embody and critique the archetypal American male seeker/detective/scholar, set adrift in a world that no longer makes rational or moral sense. For the full episode, and to access all our bonus material, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Anne Balay is the author of two extraordinary works of social history: Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Steelworkers and Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers. Her work investigates the intersection of queer and working class identities, and shows us how industrial, blue collar working environments are undergoing profound structural and social transformations in the 21st century. In this conversation, she shares stories and insights from the incredible people she’s encountered in her research, and reflects on the intersection of personal identity, working class culture, and neoliberal capitalism.

Justin Rogers-Cooper helps us takes a deep dive into the aesthetic and political legacy of Kurt Cobain, who died of suicide 25 years ago this month. Cobain is an iconic pop cultural figure for a number of reasons, but this conversation focuses on his personal politics, and how his band Nirvana expressed an organic, biologically-obsessed form of anti-capitalism. Emerging from the working class hell of the 1980s deindustrialized Pacific Northwest, Cobain’s art explored how an empty, impoverished society literally tears human bodies to pieces. From drugs to guns to misogyny, racism, violence, and capitalism itself, if you want to understand the inner contours of the American nightmare, Kurt Cobain’s life story and artistic output remain as critical as ever.