This collection examines the child’s role in contemporary post-apocalyptic films and television. In these narratives, children have occupied conflicting positions—as harbingers of disaster or as symbols of survival and hope. The child in many post-apocalyptic narratives occupies a unique space that oscillates between civilization and tribalism, human and animal, life and death, hope and despair, faith and nothingness. By exploring the ways the child character functions within a dystopian framework, the chapters in this book illustrate how traditional notions of childhood are tethered to sites of adult conflict and disaster, a connection that often works to reaffirm the “rightness” of past systems of social order.

Contributions by: Ingrid E. Castro, Joseph V. Giunta, Cory Jobb, Cijo Joy, Suniti Madaan, Elaine Morton, Denis Newiak, Debbie Olson, Nick Petrov, Matthew Smith, Monica Sousa