Future Child: Proposing a Post-Anthropocene Pedagogy

• In Event: 64.089 - Sheraton Roundtable 12 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 64.089-8 - Disrupting Narratives of Children: Embodiment, Materiality, and the "Whole" Child

Abstract

For many, the Anthropocene foreshadows the
apocalypse: a fertile terrain to speculate about
the future, which can displace the now. We aim
to reconceptualize this era, drawing inspiration
from those working to imagine possible eras for
the post-Anthropocene—imaginaries that do
not deny the material histories and urgencies of
the present. In particular, we seek to transform
the ways children are figured in this epoch.
In this conceptual essay, we (re)consider the
Anthropocene, explore how figurations of the
child tap into environmental futurism, and call
for a pedagogy of the post-Anthropocene which
rejects future-orientations that negate children
as bearers of their own experience and agents of
their own purpose.

Authors

• Chessa Adsit-Morris

• Alexandra Lakind, University of Wisconsin - Madison