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.
Introduction: 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 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
