Happy Nostalgia: Making Connections with the Music of the ‘90s began at the CUNY Graduate Center as a venue for MALS students, faculty, and friends to explore the music of the 1990s. “Nostalgia” was proposed as a recognition that the decade represents a culmination, as certain analog experiences, technologies and structures came to an end. The “happy” was proposed as not simply a fondness for the past, but a recognition that the decade also marked the emergence of new trends and new templates for reading the present and celebrating how music is at the center of current understandings of politics and identity. From the beginning, one of the goals of the project was to create connections, a local community with broad interests, spanning nations, eras, and genres. The results exceeded all expectations. Contributions came from current and former MALS students, classmates from the English Ph.D. program, and faculty with MALS and other CUNY affiliations. These contributions reflect a wide range of interests and perspectives, all in conversation with each other, and, we hope, with anyone who shares an interest in the music of the 1990s and all that the possibilities it represents.
