Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen and In-Between addresses the intersection of children's and youth's agency and popular culture. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency, power, and voice in children's lives, this book places popular culture and representation as central to this endeavor. Core themes of family, gender, temporality, politics, education, technology, disability, conflict, identity, ethnicity, and friendship traverse across the chapters, framed through various film, television, literature, and virtual media sources. Here, childhood is considered far from homogeneous and the dominance of neoliberal models of agency is questioned by intersectional and intergenerational analyses. This book posits there is vast power in popular culture representations of children's agency, and interrogation of these themes through interdisciplinary lenses is vital to furthering knowledge and understanding about children's lives and within childhood studies.
Introduction Jessica Clark and Ingrid E. Castro - Zuzu's Petals and Scout's Mockingbirds: The Legacy of Children's Agency in Popular Culture Part I: Political Agency Chapter 1: Catherine Hartung - "To All the Little Girls. . .Never Doubt that You are Valuable and Powerful": Representations of Children's Agency in the Pop Culture Politics of the Trump Era Chapter 2: Fearghus Roulston and Lucy Newby - Innocent Victims and Troubled Combatants: Representations of Childhood and Adolescence in Post-Conflict Northern Irish Cinema Era Chapter 3: John C. Nelson - "Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves": Agency and Dehumanization of Children During Wartime Part II: Social Agency Chapter 4: Anja Hoeing - Animalic Agency: Intersecting the Child and the Animal in Popular British Children's Fiction Chapter 5: Michael G. Cornelius - Homogeneity, Agency, and the Girls' College Series, 1905-1925 Chapter 6: Terri Suico - Fractured Friendships and Finding Oneself: Adolescent Girls Losing Friends but Finding Their Voices in Recent Young Adult Literature Chapter 7: Jessica Clark - "Speddies" with Spray Paints: Intersections of Agency, Childhood, and Disability in Award-Winning Young Adult Fiction Chapter 8: Tabitha Parry Collins, Mary L. Fahrenbruck, and Leanna Lucero - Trans Reality: The Development of Agency in Trans*gender and Gender Fluid Characters in Young Adult Novels Part III: Generational Agency Chapter 9: Michelle Nicole Boyer-Kelly - Maori Agents of Change: Examining the Children of Whale Rider, Once Were Warriors, and Potiki Chapter 10: Shih-Wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau - Children's Agency and the Notion of Guai in Chinese Reality TV Chapter 11: John Kerr - Children Redefining Adult Reality in Maternal Gothic Films Chapter 12: Ingrid E. Castro - The Spirit and the Witch: Hayao Miyazaki's Agentic Girls and Their (Intra)Independent Genderational Childhoods Afterword David Buckingham -Agency and Representation in Children's Media Culture
