Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction

Travel, Technology, Time

Edited by Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark - Afterword by Gary Westfahl - Contributions by Ingrid E. Castro; Jessica Clark; Muireann B. Crowley; Joseph Giunta; Erin Kenny; Jessica Kenty-Drane; Kip Kline; Megan McDonough; Joaquin Muñoz; Kwasu David Tembo and Stephanie Thompson

Child 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 that there is vast power in science fiction representations of children’s agency to challenge accepted notions of neoliberal agency, enhance understandings of agency in childhood studies, and further contextualize agency in the lives, voices, and cultures of youth.

Lexington Books

Pages: 304 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9738-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-9740-1 • Paperback • June 2021 • $48.99 • (£38.00)

978-1-4985-9739-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $46.50 • (£36.00)

Series: Children and Youth in Popular Culture

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Children's & Young Adult Literature, Social Science / Popular Culture

Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction

Travel, Technology, Time

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Child 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 that there is vast power in science fiction representations of children’s agency to challenge accepted notions of neoliberal agency, enhance understandings of agency in childhood studies, and further contextualize agency in the lives, voices, and cultures of youth.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 304 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9738-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-9740-1 • Paperback • June 2021 • $48.99 • (£38.00)

978-1-4985-9739-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $46.50 • (£36.00)

Series: Children and Youth in Popular Culture

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Children's & Young Adult Literature, Social Science / Popular Culture

Author

Ingrid 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.

Table of Contents

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 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

Reviews

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

This 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, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 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