Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Becky Jefcoate, who like me was at university in Lampeter from 1991-94 where she studied Archaeology and English Literature. We find out how Becky ended up there and why her school teacher had misgivings about doing Archaeology as a single honours subject.

We talk about how Lampeter was a place you knew pretty quickly whether you were going to fit in or not and how it attracted a certain type of self-sufficient person.

After university, Becky moved to London and we learn about her time working at the Cartoon Museum as well as in a theatre and at the Royal Opera House. We talk about the collections in the Cartoon Museum, exploring with different audiences what the relevance was to them personally of the likes of Hogarth and Bagpuss. There was a specific Nostalgia exhibition, and we learn how it affected Becky, and the therapeutic possibilities involved when recording people’s memories.

Becky has always kept a diary including from her Lampeter days, and we talk about the efficacy of diaries.

We learn about Becky’s childhood. She was born in Birkenhead and moved to Lincolnshire, and remembers watching Robin of Sherwood and its mystical world England. Her favourite film was Raiders of the Lost Ark and which was a determining factor in studying Archaeology. Musically, Becky was into the Pet Shop Boys and Crowded House.

Becky was one of the DJs in the Union Disco in Lampeter, and we talk about the interplay between new and old music played by bands at gigs.

We discuss the balance of Archaeology and English as they are about people and their stories, what they have left behind, and we find out how they have both helped Becky in terms of her career.

Becky wrote over 500 letters to every arts organization and museum when applying for work, and she reflects on whether with the passing of time we tend to remember the good times, and what we learn from the past.

Then, at the end of the interview, we find out about the performances Becky was involved with in the Drama Society, about the way we look back on particular years, and why Becky is an especially nostalgic person.

My guest this week is Alexander Ornella, Senior Lecturer in Religion at the University of Hull where he has been since 2011. Alexander talks about his work, and how he has moved into sociology and criminology in addition to religious studies. His PhD, which he undertook in his native Austria, was on Catholic theology and looked at film and modern art.

We find out about the traditional Catholic theology degree that Alexander did in the 1990s and how he wanted to become a priest. Alexander has always seen himself as navigating different disciplines, and he talks about how he follows through on students’ interests in, say, sport. We also discuss how the way of accessing data has changed since his own undergraduate days, in terms of technological change.

We hear about Alexander’s childhood in the south of Austria. He remembers drives to Italy when young and how his father was into sport and nature. If he hadn’t wanted to become a priest (he was an altar boy for many years) Alexander would have studied Economics – and we find out why he’s glad he didn’t.

We learn why Alexander doesn’t entertain the ‘alternative universe’ notion, and he refers to how he was fairly shielded from media when he was young, so missed the likes of The A-Team and Knight Rider which his schoolfriends were talking about. Yet he has ended up teaching film and popular culture.

He discusses what has shaped him, including the time when Austria joined the EU, and the role of artificial borders and barriers in people’s lives, and I ask Alexander whether he feels nostalgic, post-Brexit, about his early years.

We learn about his interest in science fiction and how it has led to his interest in technology, and how Alexander has built his own computer servers.

We talk about what films teach us about what it means to be human and what we make of society, and Alexander speaks, too, about our relationship with the environment.

We find out why Alexander is not too keen on talking about painful experiences and why we don’t need much to make the world a better place – e.g. by smiling or being friendly a bit more.

Then, at the end of the interview, Alexander reveals why he prefers to draw on positive rather than negative experiences, and we discover why Alexander was dreading the question about whether he is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.

Maggie Webster is my fantastic guest this week, five years to the day since I broadcast my first Nostalgia Interviews podcast episode.

Maggie teaches Religious Education at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, and we learn that she did a PhD in Lampeter which explored how people become witches on social media. Maggie discusses her fieldwork in which she interviewed 13 witches who ranged in age from 20 to 70, and how among other things they fought back against stereotypes.

We talk about how there was a coming out of the broom cupboard in the 1990s, through magazine articles, films and TV series but how even today it is very difficult to find in-person covens.

We find out how Maggie was destined to do this research on contemporary witchcraft, we learn about her research drivers and how it was as much a hobby as work as she would read all fiction and watch films about witches in her downtime.

We talk about Witch Lit and The Witches of Eastwick and how films today are less heteronormative than they were a few decades ago. Maggie has compared the two versions of Hocus Pocus, thirty years apart, in terms of showing how we have changed as a society.

We discuss Eurovision 2023 which was just about to take place when we recorded the interview, and we learn that Maggie was brought up in a working class family in Bangor, North Wales. She talks about the role of music as a child especially listening to Leo Sayer when cleaning the house, and hearing her Dad singing ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ to help when she was anxious.

We move on to talk about the Welsh hiraeth and nostalgic longing in relation to Beddgelert, and she talks about the differences between the campus where she works and that of Lampeter, discussing along the way subcultures and Dungeons and Dragons.

Maggie then talks about how she ended up going to university and the importance of education having come from a background where her mother was not allowed to have one.

We find out why Maggie wanted to study religion and the importance of pluralism and we discuss her eclectic religious predilections. (You also get to hear my confession regarding church and the Top 40 singles chart.) We also find out how Maggie learns from what she has done and how it has made her the person (and academic) she is today.

Then, at the end of the interview, Maggie reflects on her educational journey where becoming an academic was never on the cards, but that she has always been set on a path where she can help and make a difference to people’s lives.

My guest this week is journalist, editor and poet Susan Norvill, who like me was in Lampeter in the early 1990s where she read Victorian Studies and English Literature.

We find out about Susan’s love of Victorian literature and what drew her to Lampeter, and how the place exerts such a hold over those who went there, and how the people are still there for us.

Susan grew up in Weston-super-Mare and went to a convent school in Bristol, and we find out about her first job after leaving university as a mortgage counsellor.

Susan worked at the Albert Hotel in Weston in the summer holidays while she was at university and recounts the time when she bumped into Anthony Hopkins while he was filming The Remains of the Day. We discover that Susan was offered a job as an extra and find out why she unfortunately had to decline.

We talk about Susan’s earliest memories and her love of Anne of Green Gables. She did a teacher training course in Scarborough after graduating, and we talk about the literary connections in the North Yorkshire town.

We find out about Susan’s affinity with the Victorian era, and with the music of the 90s when we were at Lampeter. We talk about how the journey to school in Bristol in the car was very music-oriented, and Susan’s affection for Roy Orbison.

We discuss the influence of radio, vinyl, cassettes and other audio technologies as well as Ceefax, and about which facets of the past appeal, and whether you have to live through an era to feel connected to it.

Susan edited the Hong Kong Industrialist in the 1990s and we find out about her time in Hong Kong at the time of the Handover. We also find out about Susan’s poetry, and the anthology she collated and edited following the Ukrainian invasion by Russia, United for Ukraine.

Then, towards the end of the interview, Susan reflects on the bittersweet nature of nostalgia and how the past serves the present. We find out what Susan’s younger self wanted to be and, at the end, we discover whether Susan is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.

My guest this week is Mina Radovic, archivist, curator, film historian and founder of the international charitable organization Liberating Cinema. I met Mina at the Spaces of Memory conference he helped to organize at the University of Vienna in March 2023.

Mina is also a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London, on German linguistics and film studies, studying the framing of totalitarian language and film in 1930s Germany. We learn how the films from that era included musicals and comedies which are not the ones we might expect to hear about, though some of the films are still banned.

We find out about the antecedents to this project including the ‘worldbuilding’ cinema of Douglas Sirk, and about Mina’s masterclasses during lockdown as part of Liberating Cinema. Mina reveals who has been part of his series, including filmmakers from the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia.

Born in Belgrade, Mina grew up during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia and he talks about the role of Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Srdjan Dragojevic, 1996) – a war and anti-war film at the same time – in shaping him.

We talk about the latest Sight and Sound poll of greatest ever films and the role of impact in academia, and we find out about the time Mina met Martin Scorsese.

We learn about Mina’s time in St. Andrews where as an undergraduate he studied Film Studies and German and about how he grew up going to the cinema. We talk about how one cannot be nostalgic about war itself and discuss whether we can be nostalgic for the future.

Then, towards the end of the interview, we find out what Mina’s younger self thought he would end up doing – and how as far back as primary school he thought he would end up studying film.

My guest this week is Anne-Sophie Ouattara who, until March 2023, was the National Portrait Gallery intern at The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge in Canterbury.

Anne-Sophie is really interested in nostalgia as a teacher of French literature and language and a curator. She has curated her first exhibition called Rooted in Fabric – an exploration of African and black identities through fabric, and is working on a display of three remarkable women of Canterbury. Anne-Sophie talks about finding ways of touching an audience today, connecting the past and the present.

We find out how Anne-Sophie loves getting into other people’s lives but hates writing about herself whereas she loves photography and making images, and the authenticity that comes with that.

Anne-Sophie looks at the gaps in our history as part of her curation work where most of the people have been rich, white and powerful, and so the exhibition has been about acknowledging those who have been forgotten. We learn about the founder of the University of Kent mosque, Sinan Rawi, who as it happens used to be a neighbour of mine! Anne-Sophie talks about how these works can change people’s perceptions of what the past was.

We find out about Anne-Sophie’s background. She was a flutist, and we learn about the family dimension here, as well as about her background in legal history. Her father, who was born in West Africa, was a big barrister, though Anne-Sophie has moved in a different direction.

Anne-Sophie talks about recreating memories in a different context, and how for her ‘home’ is not really a geographical place and how its meaning constantly changes. We also find out why Anne-Sophie is not always in touch with people from her past and about the importance of being in control of the narrative.

We talk about what people want to be remembered for in the context of exhibitions and exploring black identities in the context of fabrics and colonization. We find out about the visitor feedback at The Beaney, and exploring the parts of history about which they don’t know, and to see how different audiences interacted with her exhibitions.

We find out about Anne-Sophie’s future hopes for work in this sector and the importance of diversity in curating, including showing how resilient and creative her ancestors were.

Then, at the end of the interview, we find out what Anne-Sophie’s younger self wanted to be, including being a musician, and what her parents think about the journey she has made. She also discusses her need to take the next big step, and we learn why she is a looking back and forward type of person (and the constant dialogue that exists between the past and the future).

My guest this week is Rhiannon Grant, who teaches in Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham. We learn about Rhiannon’s work, which includes recently having had an edited book published featuring a range of international academics and lay writers.

Rhiannon grew up in Watford, did her first degree in Philosophy and Theology in Nottingham, has an MA from Leeds and a PhD, which she also undertook at Leeds, in uses of Quaker language.

We find out that Rhiannon was into reading and writing from a young age and was, indeed, writing before she started reading, and had read The Lord of the Rings while in primary school.

We learn how Rhiannon takes book recommendations from her PhD students as much as the other way around, and we talk about changes in the way education has evolved over the years and the way certain texts e.g. The Matrix have become canonical. We discuss also the use of pop culture in seminars.

We discuss the reading records that exist via Goodreads which Rhiannon uses to log all the books she reads, and how that can all be shared with others.

We talk about the recent Roald Dahl controversy and how it plays out on social media, and how we deal with non-inclusive language, and the way that affects our understanding of other writers including Enid Blyton.

We find out what made Rhiannon enter academia and why she did a Masters in Gender, Sexuality and Queer Theory, as well as about the evolution that occurs when a student takes an idea from a tutor and moves it in a fresh direction.

We find out which tutors have inspired Rhiannon and the ways in which our ideas have developed over time, as well as about people’s assumptions about the relationship between faith and academic study.

We reflect on whether we should be changing our names when we publish in different genres, the way we may be able to overcome various obstacles that present themselves, and we learn that Rhiannon’s younger self wanted to be a vet and also a writer. At the end of the interview, we discover whether Rhiannon is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.

My guest this week is Dereck Daschke whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing in Salt Lake City when we were both reviewing films at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 for the Journal of Religion and Film. Dereck teaches Religious Studies at Truman State University in Missouri and, like me, works in the area of religion and film.

We find out about Dereck’s dissertation in Graduate School on Freud and the apocalypse and Dereck reflects on whether film can be a stand in for religious experience. We also discuss apocalyptic revenge fantasies and the Mad Max films.

Dereck talks about his Lutheran upbringing in the Chicago suburbs and we find out why he has always been drawn to academia. He has a seminal memory of seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey in the basement of his local public library. We find out why this film made such an impact.

The psychology of transcendence has always interested Dereck, and we learn about Dereck’s interest in Bob Dylan and his memories of seeing Dylan and Tom Petty in concert in the mid-80s.

We talk about Dereck’s stand up comedy, and how there is a fine line between teaching and stand up, in terms of performance. We learn about the processes behind this as well as what Dereck learns from teaching, and how it can be so fulfilling.

We discover what made Dereck study religion, and how it overlaps with psychology and mental health, and why religion is a bone he can’t let go of, and we find out why films and religion are involved in the same sort of enterprise in terms of challenging the way we understand reality to work.

We discover why Twelve Monkeys and Monty Python and the Holy Grail are such pivotal films for Dereck, and we learn that Dereck is ordained to officiate at Dudeist weddings.

Then, towards the end of the interview, we find out what his younger self would have expected to do, and Dereck reflects on the question of what is the myth or story we are living through, and how we are in the middle of our own stories. We also learn why Dereck is more of a looking forward person today than he used to be.

Matt Batten works for the Llandaff Diocese of the Church in Wales as Director of Communications and we first met in the early 2000s when Matt did a Masters in Ecumenical Studies at Trinity College Carmarthen. Based in Cardiff, Matt talks about how going to university was the making of him.

We talk about reunions and why Matt is not keen to go back, and the concept of ‘going out’ and how it was not enjoyable prior to his university days during which he never missed a lecture.

We learn why Matt is glad not to have had social media back in the 90s, and why he bought a disposable camera for evenings out in those days – and we reflect on why we didn’t tend to take photos from our lectures.

Matt is doing a Masters in Digital Theology and talks about why he has stopped live Tweeting at conferences and doesn’t take as many photos at gigs as he used to.

We talk about my film reviews and whether they should be posted (I have acted on Matt’s very kind advice), and we talk about the genres he watches irrespective of quality – horror and kung fu. Matt especially likes religious horror films which he speaks of in the context of biblical literacy, and we learn why churches are not comfortable with horror and sin.

We share our quite different memories of watching The Exorcist and how many people tended to laugh at it. We talk too about Matt’s passion for the films of Brian De Palma and we find out what happened when he went to the cinema with a priest to watch Prey for the Devil.

We find out why Matt has looked back at the last five years with anger due to health matters and how he has changed, and how hard it is to look back when one of his close friends has died to stage 4 cancer.

Then, at the end of the interview, we find what his younger self wanted to be and how much joy Matt has from looking back and relating it to the now, and why he has a fear of standing still. 

My guest this week is Revd. Edward Owen, Vicar in the South Cardiff Ministry area, the most multicultural area of Wales, who like me did his degree in Lampeter in the early 1990s.

We learn that Edward’s grandmother’s brother was Richard Burton and he talks about a photo from when he was aged three of him with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor taken in his grandmother’s front room.

We find out how Edward ended up in Lampeter and we talk about the overlap between St. David’s University College and the Church in Wales. We talk about what might be said to comprise the hub of Lampeter and how it has changed but also remained the same, and how Lampeter had a connection which bigger universities lacked.

We discuss why nostalgia is important for one’s own development and why Edward has chosen to be an inner city parish priest. He talks about the concept of ‘intentional community’, misremembering the past and our capacity to cling to a past that is not real.

Edward identifies the importance of belonging and the Church’s role in rebuilding that common narrative, and we find out about Edward’s interfaith walks. For Edward, bringing together people who are different is more important than bringing together people who are the same.

We hear about Edward’s work with conflict resolution and mediation, and Edward explains why nostalgia enables us to change and how we only get better by embracing that which is difficult.

Edward reveals that his father thought he should become an accountant and was dumbfounded when Edward left the teaching profession to become a priest, and Edward talks about the self-criticism that comes with looking back at the past.

Then, at the end of the interview, we talk about how there are things we do now which we couldn’t have done in the past, the role of social media and the public vs. private interface and how our lives are often led through a filter. Edward refers also to the running community of which he is a part, why his memories are mainly positive and Edward explains why ‘Why’ is such an important question for him.