ISSN 2161-539X (online) © 2022 Alabama Communication Association Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2022, pp. 136-149. “I Wish I Had A Time Machine”: Looking B[l]ackward at ABC’s The Wonder Years (2021) through the Re- cuperation of Black Public Memory & Afro-Nostalgia Julia M. Medhurst ∗ Asha S. Winfield + Tina M. Harris § The last few years have been marked with several media programs that travel back in time to color the past, give contrast to its picture, and widen the frame constraining the overexposed image of American life in the 1960s, partic- ularly in the South for Black families. In 2021, ABC released the reboot of the 1980s television show The Wonder Years (2021) featuring the Williamses, a Black middle-class family living in Alabama during the late 1960s. The young boy protagonist, Dean Williams, uses living memory to insert, highlight, and center real moments in American history with Black voices and experiences. Using bell hooks’ oppositional gaze, Badia Ahad-Legardy’s Afro-nostal- gia, and Critical Race Theory’s (CRT) counterstorytelling, we posit that living memory for Black audiences exists with and beyond the immovable, oft untouchable earthy materials of museums, historical markers, street signage, and popular speeches. Further, we argue that the remaking of Black American scenes in popular culture is an intentional recuperation of Black public memory, a necessary revival for the advancement of contemporary Black resistance. This retelling uses stories of color and in color to produce a living public memory that contests the incomplete, hege- monic narratives of past and present. Keywords: Afro-Nostalgia, Black Public Memory, Oppositional Gaze, Television, The Wonder Years (2021) Entertaining the Time Machine and Romancing History We open this essay with an excerpt from the 2021 film Reminiscence, starring Hugh Jackman, which tells the story of Nick Bannister, a white memory engineer whose machine enables its guests to submerge their bodies and minds into the living memory of their own lives. ∗ Julia M. Medhurst (M.A., Texas A&M University) is an Adjunct Professor in Communication Studies at the Uni- versity of North Texas and a doctoral student in the Department of Communication & Journalism at Texas A&M University. She is a critical/cultural rhetorician who studies the intersections of race, rhetoric, and regionalism in popular culture and national politics. + Asha S. Winfield (Ph.D., Louisiana State University) is an Assistant Professor in the Manship School of Mass Com- munication at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a filmmaker and critical/cultural media scholar who studies Black culture and health in television, film, and communities through interpretative and arts-based qualitative methods. She is the 2022 recipient of NCA’s Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. § Dr. Tina M. Harris (Ph.D., Louisiana State University) is an internationally renowned interracial communication scholar with particular interests in race, media representations, and racial social justice. Her pedagogy, research, and service at LSU are driven by her desire to empower others with the communication and critical thinking skills neces- sary for becoming global citizens. The end goal of these efforts is to equip students to use an applied approach where theory leads to practice in a world where racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity are a welcome inevitably. She is the 2022 recipient of NCA’s Distinguished Scholar Award.