Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time

(Hardback)

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Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time intersects considerations about childrens and youths agency with the popular culture genre of science fiction. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency in childrens 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 childrens 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.

Reviews

This is a wonderful collection of essays which triumphantly prove the importance of integrating childhood and youth studies and childrens 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 peoples worlds and into the ways adults imagine childrens 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 Clarks 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 books 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

Author Bio

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.