Description
Book SynopsisChild and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time intersects considerations about children's and youth's agency with the popular culture genre of science fiction. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency in children's lives, this collection places science fiction at the heart of this endeavor. Retellings of the past, narratives of the present, and new landscapes of the future, each explored in science fiction, allow for creative reimaginings of the capabilities, movements, and agency of youth. Core themes of generation, embodiment, family, identity, belonging, gender, and friendship traverse across the chapters and inform the contributors' readings of various film, literature, television, and virtual media sources. Here, children and youth are heterogeneous, and agency as a central analytical concept is interrogated through interdisciplinary, intersectional, intergenerational, and posthuman analyses. The contributors argue th
Trade ReviewThis is a wonderful collection of essays which triumphantly prove the importance of integrating childhood and youth studies and children’s literature. Exploring notions of time, agency, and futurity through the lens of science fiction, this book provides intriguing and fascinating insights into children and young people’s worlds and into the ways adults imagine children’s futures and understand their own pasts. -- Heather Montgomery, The Open University, UK
We embrace children and youth as our future, yet we consistently silence them and fail to take them seriously in our present. This powerful edited collection creatively uses science fiction to disrupt this problematic pattern by offering readers of all ages and backgrounds an engaging and necessary intervention in children and youth studies. A must-read for those committed to centering the voices and experiences of children and youth in the world. -- Georgiann Davis, author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis
In Castro and Clark’s fascinating volume, we meet mutant children, zombie children, time-traveling children, cyborg children, post-apocalyptic children, and children plunged into all varieties of uncanny circumstances. The book’s engaging and erudite discussions of these fantastic scenarios offer memorable insights into iconic popular narratives, and, collectively, they articulate a refreshing affirmation of the resilience, dignity, and creativity with which young people negotiate the challenges presented to them by adult society. -- Randy Laist, Goodwin College
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Girl Zombies and Boy Wonders: The Future of Agency is Now! Jessica Clark and Ingrid E. Castro Part I: Past Chapter One: “Why Are You Keeping This Curiosity Door Locked?” Childhood Subjectivities and Play as Conflict Resolution in the Postmodern Web Series Stranger Things Joseph Giunta Chapter Two: “It Was a Wonder I Was Even Born”: Reversing the Technical Performance of Childhood in Back to the Future Kip Kline Chapter Three: In the Shadow of the Claw: Jubilee, X-23, and the Mutated Possibilities of Youth Agency across Generations in the World of the X-Men Kwasu David Tembo and Muireann B. Crowley Part II: Present Chapter Four: Biker Gangs and Boyhood Agency Jessica Clark Chapter Five: From Tribute to Mockingjay: Representations of Katniss Everdeen’s Agency in the Hunger Games Series Megan McDonough Chapter Six: The Yoke of Childhood: Misgivings about Children’s Relationship to Technology in Contemporary Science Fiction Jessica Kenty-Drane Chapter Seven: “Ship Wars” and the OTP: Narrating Desire, Literate Agency, and Emerging Sexualities in Fanfiction of The 100 Erin Kenny Part III: Future Chapter Eight: A Pedagogy of Childhood Agency: Teaching Power of Youth in the Ender Universe Joaquin Muñoz Chapter Nine: Sanctuary and Agency in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction Stephanie Thompson Chapter Ten: The Emergence of Agency after Bionuclear War: Posthuman Child – Animal Possibilities Ingrid E. Castro Afterword: The Children of Wonder Gary Westfahl
