Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema

Debbie Olson is lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington.

• Introduction, Debbie OlsonChapter 1: Monstrous Conceptions: Reading Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979) and Anton Leader’s Children of the Damned (1963), Aryak GuhaChapter 2: Sustenance for the Body and the Soul: Children as a Vision of the Future of Humanity, and a Reflection of Past Sins in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema, Jennifer BrownChapter 3: Perpetual Horizons: Reproductive Futurity in Post-Apocalyptic Films, Mark HeimermannChapter 4: The Child is my Warrant: Virtue, Violence and The Road’s Radical Humanism, Joseph Wiinikka-LydonChapter 5: Space and Children in Post-Apocalyptic Film: The Road and Les Temps du Loup, Eduardo Barros-Grela and María Bobadilla Pérez Chapter 6: When Disney Went Apocalyptic: The Symbolism of Apocalyptic Images in a Post-9/11 World, Eric D. Miller Chapter 7: Children of Hope: Portrayal of Children in Post-Apocalyptic Films after 9/11, Betül Atesçi KoçakChapter 8: “Until the world deserves them”: Representations of children in The Day After, Testament, and Threads, Tarah Bro

This edited collection brings childhood studies into an important conversation with a dominant genre of recent years: post-apocalyptic cinema. Olson unites a group of international scholars who examine some expected films (The Road and The Children of Men), but also some unexpected ones (The Omega Man, I Am Legend, Dawn of the Dead, and Daybreakers). The result is a diverse and fascinating examination of how, as Olson puts it, ‘the Child . . . defines the lost past/present and becomes a motivational, almost sacred image to spur on reclamation of the future.’