CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Sam Haddow Inventing Apocalyptic Childhood
Inventing Apocalyptic Childhood explores contemporary Anglophone fiction about youth in the context of environmental catastrophe and civilizational collapse. Where mid-twentieth-century apocalyptic narratives often erase the idea of a recognisable ‘childhood’, twenty-first-century stories, I argue, seek out new models of child subjectivity beyond the false consolations of futurity and the paralysis of climate despair. My research investigates recent apocalyptic eco-fiction for children and young people by authors including Nicola Penfold, Wren James, M. G. Leonard, Polly Ho Yen, Piers Torday and M. R. Carey. These works frequently disconnect from failed adult worlds, reorienting displaced archetypes – castaways, runaways, evacuees, escapees and refugees – towards alternative forms of social, emotional and intellectual development built within our ecological catastrophe.
The principal output of this project will be a monograph that draws on childhood studies, ecocriticism and critical theory to analyse fictional depictions of children and young people amidst the existential threats of the Anthropocene. Unlike many pedagogical and economic philosophies that see children as redemptive investments in sustainable futures, these stories commonly acknowledge the irreparable damage done to the social contract linking children to civilizational continuity. By examining how such stories navigate the complexities of youth in a dying world, this research contributes to urgent conversations around childhood, agency and survival in the apocalyptic conditions of the present.