The Child of the Future Conference

30 June – 1 July 2022

Programme

Hosted by University of Cambridge

www.thechildofthefuture.com
Day 1 30th June 2022
Stream 1
8:00 — 8:15 Opening Remarks
Stella Miriam Pryce & Jodie Coates
8:15 — 9:00 Keynote:
Response-Ability in a Time of Distributed Agencies
Anouchka Bayley: University of Cambridge
9:15 — 10:45 Pandemic Childhoods
The Competent Child: The Future
of Children in China?
Aiping Nie & Juli Luxin Yin
Child Writers of the Future:
Theorizing Young People’s
Writing Practices in
Contemporary YA Fiction
Yan Du
Has the Global Pandemic
Just Given Rise to Global
(Children’s) Literature? The
Case of My Hero is You.
Maureen Hosay
11:00 — 12:30 Speculative Fiction
Who Needs SF? Generating
Useful Anxieties with Lila
Majumdar’s Children’s SF
Ahana Maitra
Staying with the Virus: ‘The Rain’
and Little Rasmus’s
Holoparasit(e)ic Future
Sumantra Baral & Aryama Bej
Now and Then: ‘Child of the
Future’ in Soviet and Russian
Children’s Literature
Ekaterina Shatalova
1 Zohre Javaheri
Stream 2
The Child of the Future
in Film
The (Trans)corporeal Girl:
Material Feminism and Japanese
Anime Film Weathering with You
Sing Cheung
For our Future: Conceptualising
the Active Adolescent in Dennis
Gansel’s Book-to-Screen
Adaptations The Wave (2008)
and We Are the Wave (2019)
Carla Plieth
Techno-Human Assemblages:
Intersections Between Child
Actors’ Performances and
Technological Virtuality in
Contemporary Children’s Film
Michael Brodski
Picturing the Future 1
It Feels Like I’m Drowning in
Feathers’: Transformative
Immersion in Contemporary
Picture Books
Jonas Vanhove
Towards an Equitable Future:
Addressing Dalit Childhood in
Select Indian Picturebooks
Sridipa Dandapat &
Priyanka Tripathi
Translation and Adaptation of
One Thousand and One
Nights for Children
Day 1 30th June 2022
Stream 1
12:45 — 13:45 Keynote:
The (Im)possibility of an After-childhood Future in
Donna Haraway’s “The Camille Stories”
Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak: University of Wroclaw &
Macarena García-González: The Catholic University of Chile
14:00 — 15:30 Memories of the Future
Beatrix Potter in Egypt:
A Future for Rural Nostalgia
Kristin Bluemel
Cognitive Narratology and the
‘4Es’: ‘Memorial Fabulation’ in
David Almond’s My Name is Mina
Emma-Louise Silva
Memory and the Binary of
Seclusion in the Future Child —
a Responsible Intermingling of
Adulthood and Innocence
Amar Roy
15:45 — 17:15 Children and the
Environment
War vs. Childhood: Traumatic
Memory in Graphic Narratives
for Younger Audiences
Iana Nikitenko
Flowing Water Songs
Magdalena Kuczaba-Flisak
Which Way to Chthulucene? First,
Release the Voice of the Child.
Maciej Wroblewski
2
Stream 2
Postcolonial Futurities
Memory, Nation and the Double
Migrant Child in Lakshmi
Persaud’s Daughters of Empire
Victoria Chang
It is not possible. I shall relate
what is’: Troilokyonath
Mukhopadhyay’s Kankabati
and the Dawn of the Empirical
‘Possible’ in Colonial Bengal
Dibyokamal Mitra
The Adolescent Protagonist:
(Un)Naturalcultural Formation
in Three Central African Novels
and in International Children’s
Rights Law
Kate Mackenzie
Religion and the Child
The Eschatological Child
Karin Rubenson
Post-Secularism: Gen Z and
Spirituality in the Covid Crisis
Rebecca Purton
The Fictional Child and the
Child Readers in Religious
Children’s Literature
Herdiana Hakim
Day 1 30th June 2022
Stream 1
17:30 — 19:00 The Future of Girlhood
The Teen Girl of the Future:
Figures and Figurations of
Extra-Ordinary Girlhood
Tina Benigno
“Where are the Girls?” Spectral
Girlhood in Young Adult South
Asian Literature
Tehmina Pirzada
Girlhood, Ontological Uncertainty
and the (Post)Human in
Wonderland and Oz
Rachel Milne
19:15 — 20:45 Queer Futurities
Adam Silvera’s They Both Die
at the End and the Queer
Comfort of Fatalism
Michelle Ann Abate
Bells to Rest, Lambs to Slaughter:
The Queer, Rural Mythology of
Machado’s The Low Low Woods
Nicholas Welch
“It’s not unnatural or twisted
that I want a baby’s love”:
Transparenthood and the
Management of Ghost Children in
Torrey Peters’ ‘Detransition, Baby’.
Jack Ward
3
Stream 2
Picturing the Future 2
Analysing Text-Image Relations in
Anti-Authoritarian Picturebooks
Clara De Moraes Souza
Reframing Multiracial
Picturebooks as Transformative
Texts: An Inquiry into Explicit
and Implicit Representations
of Multiraciality
Laura Cesa
Future Tense: Youth Imagining
the Future through Comics
Andrea Hoff
The Animal of the Future
Entering the Forbidden Forest:
Becoming Kin in
Nonhuman Spaces
Maggie Meimaridi
The Child that is in Hand:
Negotiating Power in the
Dutch Picturebook Handje?
[Take my hand?]
Rosalyn Borst
On the Wildness of Animals
and Children
Mary Galbraith
Day 2 1st July 2022
Stream 1
8:00 — 9:00 Keynote:
When Mouse Meets Lamp: Picturing Posthuman
Personhood in Disney-Pixar Animation
Zoe Jaques: University of Cambridge
9:15 — 10:45 Envisioning the Post/
Anthropocene
Post-Anthropocentric Childhoods:
Situating Covid-19 Orphans from
India in a Community of
Multi-species Kinship
Sushrita Acharjee
Who Will Read the Future?
Posthumanism and Precarious
Procreation in Late-Twentieth
Century Anglophone Fiction
Tom Zille
Reading the Future of
Children in the Anthropocene:
An Ecohumanist Analysis of
Imran Hussain’s short story
Grash (Encroach)
Shyamolima Saikia
11:00 — 12:30 Troubling Binaries
A Childhood that Remains. On the
Poststructuralist Re-Evaluation of
the Childhood-Adulthood Binary
Daan Keij
The Greta, the Bad and the Adults.
Troubling binaries
Hubbiah Rafaqat, Maëlle Asselin
de Williencourt, Rawan Gharib &
Vivek Varghese Paul
Who Should Be the Future Child?
Mohammad Shahidul
Islam Chowdhury
4
Stream 2
New Pedagogies for a
New Generation
“Studented Children”: A New
Image of Children in China
Qian Bai
Generation COVID and Their
Negotiation of Nature and
Posthuman Pedagogy
Yoko Kitaguchi, Hubbiah Rafaqat
& Rin Tsuchiya
Of Conspiracy and
Controversy: A Pedagogy
of Conspiracy Theories
Glenn Bezalel
Virtually Grown Up:
Children’s Virtual
Identities
Lockdown in Kashmir: Curfew,
Corona and Online Classes
Aatina Malik
Roblox Avatars and Childhood
Self-Identity
Olexandra Solomka &
Elizabeth Tweedale
Performing Childhood:
Locating the Child of the Future
in Cyberspaces
Soumilee Dasgupta
Day 2 1st July 2022
Stream 1
12:45 — 13:45 Keynote:
After Childhood: Narrating Childhoods, Plastics
and Other Matter(s)
Peter Kraftl: University of Birmingham, UK
14:00 — 15:30 The Mighty Genre
What is Hidden Behind the Magic
of Classic Fairy Tales? (The Case
of the Tales of Father Donat Kurti,
the Brothers Grimm, Perrault
and Andersen)
Alma Dema
Crossover Picturebooks to
Construct Hope
Esra Becan & Ilgim Veryerialaca
The Generation Generating the
Future: Speculative Fiction as
Refuge and Weapon for Youth
Myesha Jemison
15:45 — 17:15 Processing Bio-Trauma
The Child as Emblem of Lost
Futurity in Svetlana Alexievich’s
Chernobyl Prayer
Sara Pankenier Weld
Toxic Children of Bhopal
and Kasargod: Suffering and
Pain among Children of the
Successive Generations.
Rahul V & Nagendra Kumar
The Humans in the Posthuman
Future: A Study of Childhood in
Animal’s People and Swarga
Sonakshi Srivastava
5
Stream 2
Children in Covid-19
Innocent Days of Ignorance:
Revisiting Childhood
During Pandemic
Shruti Kirti & Albeena Alvi
The Wellbeing Entanglement:
a Posthumanist Reflection on
Inclusive Teaching Through
the COVID-19 Pandemic
Emily Rushton
Early Adolescents’ Experiences
of Friendship During the
COVID-19 Pandemic
Harrie Gooch
Staying with the Trouble
of Illness: Children and
Health Concerns
The Wounded Child: Precarious
Bodies and Trauma Testimony in
Graphic Medicine
Amritha R Krishnan & Smita Jha
How to Explain Chronic-Illnesses
to Children, According to
Health Play Specialists (HPS)
in the United Kingdom: A
Qualitative Study.
Paulina Perez-Duarte Mendiola
Young Adult Literature and/as
AIDS Activism
Gabriel Duckels
Day 2 1st July 2022
Stream 1
17:30 — 19:00 Disability in Fiction
Rethinking “Interlocking
Oppressions:” Imagining an
Anti-Ableist Future Through
Young Adult Literature
Caitlin Metheny &
Cammie Lawton
After the Diagnosis: Theorizing
a Future for Dyslexics with
Neurodiversity in Middle-Grade
Children’s School Stories
Elizabeth Leung
The Child of the Pandemic:
Interrogating Biopolitics,
Crime and Disability in
Peter May’s Lockdown
Jaya Sarkar
19:15 — 20:25 Cyborg Futures
‘Which Model Is This One?’:
Children and the Bioethics of
Enhancement in Klara and the Sun
Huiyun Mo
Cyborg Pedagogy:
Transformations of the
Child-Student
Katherine Murray
20:30 — 20:45 Closing Remarks
Stella Miriam Pryce, Jodie Coates & Lindsay Burton
*Please note all listed times are GMT
Stream 2
Conceptualising the Child
Getting Older - Growing Up?
Destabilising Maturation
Vera Veldhuizen & Nic Hilton
Finding Understandings of
Childhood in Tactile Picture Books
Lily Stone
The Child of the Future is Trans:
Alternative Gendered Imaginaries
in Les Garçons Sauvages
Jacob Breslow
Futuristic Visions of
Technology
Child/Robot Symbiosis in Hatke’s
Little Robot and Teer and Park’s
Veda: Assembly Required
Gwen Athene Tarbox
Intersectional Representation on
Small Screens: Considering the
Future of Children’s and Young
Adult Media Consumption
Meghann Meeusen
Techno-Anxieties as a Potential
Catalyst for Growth in The 100
Heather Sanford &
Jamie Bienhoff