BB: Young adult speculative fiction: between ecopedagogy and green (European?) citizenship

Speculative fiction, and young adult (YA) fiction in particular, has long been acknowledged as a fertile terrain for political reflection for adolescents, often foregrounding their role as agents of change within uneven and unjust systems of power. YA speculative fiction may help young people to engage with abstract political ideas, offering a framework they can later use to explore real-world political issues. Such potential for a political education in YA fiction encompasses also an environmental/climate dimension. 

This talk explores the pedagogical potential of YA speculative ecofiction, discussing which of its tropes – such as heroism, inter-generational struggle, kinship – and which of its subgenres – dystopias, post-apocalyptic fiction, eco-horror  – are better suited to support a green pedagogy. It also frames these pedagogical reflections in the framework of citizenship studies, in particular recent reflections on Green European citizenship (Machin and Tan 2024). Can YA speculative ecofiction be made into a pedagogical tool that fosters critical citizenship? How? And, on the other hand, what are the advantages and disadvantages of citizenship (and Europe) as a framework of reference to promote political engagement on climate issues? 

Lucio De Capitani is a researcher at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His research interests include colonial and postcolonial literatures (especially Indian writing in English, the work of Amitav Ghosh and Robert Louis Stevenson), theories of world literature, the connections between anthropology and literary studies, and ecocriticism (with a special focus on cli-fi and solarpunk). He has co-edited the collection Venice and the Anthropocene. An Ecocritical Guide (2022, wetlands) and published Ethnographic Narratives as World Literature. Uneven Entanglements in European and South Asian Writing (2023, Palgrave). E-mail: lucio.decapitani(at)unive.it