CLCF Research Assistant Cate Cleo Alexander is helping to organize a symposium themed around nostalgia. The symposium, which will take place on February 13, 2026 in Montréal, welcomes anyone who is feeling nostalgic in this age of technological advancement and AI. Nostalgia will be explored in its many forms, from embodied experiences to lost futures. Whether you are an artist, student, or professor, come bring your papers and/or research creation work — we would love to have you!

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what does my nostalgia really mean at all?

The Nostagain Network is an interuniversity research collective that studies the generative potentials of nostalgia. We are happy to share our 2026 Call for Papers for our fourth symposium this February in Montréal. Artists, students, researchers, professors, and nostalgia enthusiasts are all encouraged to apply.

This year, our theme is FRAMES OF REFERENCE. Our topic streams include: 

• What can our nostalgia for certain pasts tell us about a particular kind of future we want?
• How do objects and materials help convey, preserve, or even alter the past?
• To what extent do commercial or personal copies of the past retain its original qualities? Where does nostalgia begin and end?
• To what extent is nostalgia helpful or harmful? When we realize what we’ve lost, how do anti-aging companies, media remakes, and political campaigns promising to respond to our shattered nostalgias? 
• What do people do with the nostalgia they have for unactualized, repressed, or speculative pasts?

Please see our website for more details:

[ x ] Research Creation Works and Paper Presentations are welcome!

[ x ] All submissions are due by December 19, 2025

[ x ] Notification of Acceptances sent by mid-January 2026

[ x ] Frames of Reference will occur on February 13, 2026

For more information, please email: nostagain@gmail.com