Literary Cultures and Twenty-First-Century Childhoods

In the early decades of the twenty-first century, we are grappling with the legacies

of past centuries and their cascading effects upon children and all people. We

realize anew how imperialism, globalization, industrialization, and revolution

continue to reshape our world and that of new generations. At a volatile moment,

this collection asks how twenty-first century literature and related media

represent and shape the contemporary child, childhood, and youth.

Because literary representations construct ideal childhoods as well as model the

rights, privileges, and respect afforded to actual young people, this collection

surveys examples from popular culture and from scholarly practice. Chapters

investigate the human rights of children in literature and international policy; the

potential subjective agency and power of the child; the role models proposed for

young people; the diverse identities children embody and encounter; and the

environmental well-being of future human and nonhuman generations.

As a snapshot of our developing historical moment, this collection identifies

emergent trends, considers theories and critiques of childhood and literature,

and observes how new technologies and paradigms are destabilizing past

conventions of storytelling and lived experience.

Nathalie op de Beeck is the author of Suspended Animation: Children’s Picture

Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity (2010) and co-creator of Little Machinery:

A Critical Facsimile Edition (2009). Her work appears in The Oxford Handbook of

Children’s Literature (2011), The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (2017),

and journals including CLAQ and CLE. She is Associate Professor of English at

Pacific Lutheran University, USA.