This collection merges representations of children and youth in various science fiction texts with childhood studies theories and debates. Set in the past, present, and future, science fiction landscapes and technologies sometimes constrain, but often expand, agentic expression, movement, and collaboration.
Many of the essays are provocative and insightful, asking questions of how their focal texts relate to their publication eras and cultures of origin, as well as how sf can expand readers' understanding of childhood agency. . . . Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction is a thought-provoking collection of essays and, ultimately, a worthwhile addition to popular-culture criticism and youth agency discourses.
* Science Fiction Studies *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 CollegeIngrid E. Castro is professor of sociology and chair of the Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Department at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Jessica Clark is lecturer in childhood studies and sociology at the University of Essex.
Introduction: Girl Zombies and Boy Wonders: The Future of Agency is Now!
Jessica Clark and Ingrid E. Castro
Part I: The 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: The Present
Chapter Four: Biker Gangs and Boyhood Agency in Akira
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: The Future
Chapter Eight: A Pedagogy of Childhood Agency: Teaching Power of Youth in the Ender Universe
Joaquin Munoz
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