Child as citizen : agency and activism in children’s literature and culture

Abstract

Child as Citizen: Agency and Activism in Children’s Literature and Culture addresses children’s and young adult agency and activism across literature and culture, demonstrating how these forces influence child citizenship. Contributors highlight the agentic voices and activist practices growing across all spheres of young people’s lives, as well as the challenges to active citizenship that children face in unjust sociopolitical contexts. The volume is interdisciplinary, drawing on the sociology of childhood, children’s literature studies, youth culture studies, media/technology/cultural studies, and Anthropocene, ecofeminist, and disability studies. Agency is framed as relational—occurring in and around literature and storytelling—and is always influenced by identity and geopolitics. Like citizenship itself, agency is not a static status but an ongoing negotiation between children and adults, institutions, nation-states, and the nonhuman.