Generation Anthropocene. Storms of My Grandchildren. Our Children's Trust. Why do these and other attempts to imagine the planet's uncertain future return us--again and again--to the image of the child? In The Child to Come, Rebekah Sheldon demonstrates the pervasive conjunction of the imperiled child and the threatened Earth and blisteringly critiques the logic of catastrophe that serves as its motive and its method.

Sheldon explores representations of this perilous future and the new figurations of the child that have arisen in response to it. Analyzing catastrophe...