Children's Literature in Fossil Fuel Culture

“Children’s Literature in Fossil Fuel Culture” considers the ways oil seeps into children’s literature. Many children’s narratives normalize or naturalize the presence of petroleum in our everyday lives, and oil industry actors have long apprehended children’s cultural forms as useful mediums for promoting petroleum, its byproducts, and its so-called wonders. On the other hand, recent children’s titles about climate justice confront the spectacular and slow violences of oil extraction and production, insisting that oil is a necessary context for understanding the multiplicities and inequities of childhood around the world Speakers

• Lara Saguisag, Associate Professor and Georgiou Chair in Children's Literature and Literacy, NYU