Soon children everywhere will be saying goodbye to their parents and to their communities and the times and the places that made them into the adults they’re on their way to becoming in college. Dr. Susan Matt, Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University in Ogden, UT, wrote a book called “Homesickness: An American History.”
Some of them will do a bit better at handling the distance – both in terms of time and geography – than others. Well, they’re certainly not alone, and they aren’t alone throughout the history of this country when you consider the countless ways that giant groups of people that moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar.
So where’d all this come from? And how does “nostalgia” play a role in it all? How is this an American phenomenon, or at least, what American things happened to contribute to homesickness and nostalgia being woven into our national fabric? What about the role of technology nowadays making it insanely easy to stay in touch? Or its ability to make one’s experiences seem outwardly perfect via Instagram and other social media tools?
FURTHER READING
Homesickness: An American History (Susan Matt, Oxford University Press, 2011)
The New Globalist is Homesick (Susan Matt, NY Times 2012)
Beware Social Nostalgia (Stephanie Coontz, NY Times 2013)
The Ethos of the Overinvolved Parents (The Atlantic, Laura McKenna, 2017)
Involved Parents Get Their Own College Guide (Chronicle of Higher Ed, Julia Piper 2019)
Why Peter Thiel Fears Star Trek (New Yorker, Manu Saadia 2017)
A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction (New Yorker, Jill Lepore 2017)
Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid (Fernandez, Matt; Harvard University Press, 2019)
Don Quixote, College Choice and the Myth of Fit (Chronicle of Higher Ed, Moody 2011)