Teaching Villainification in Social Studies

In this collection, scholars from the United States, Canada, and Australia examine the concepts of villainification and antivillainification in social studies curriculum and popular culture, as well as within broader sociocultural contexts. Villainification is the process of identifying an individual or a small group of individuals as the sole source of a larger evil. Antivillainification considers the messy space in between individual and group culpability in order to help students develop a sense of responsibility to each other as humans in communities on this planet. Chapter authors examine topics related to U.S. politics, financial education, Holocaust education, difficult histories, apocalypse fiction, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, technology use, LGBTQ school experiences, rape culture, geographies of invasion, and the female body. Taken together, these inquiries into villainification offer thoughtful and powerful insights for teaching about historical wrongdoing in more nuanced ways, addressing the responsibility we all have to create a better world.

Book Features:

• Pushes the field of social studies to develop a more nuanced understanding of the villains of the past and present.
• Invites educators to become more thoughtful about not only curriculum but also the world around us.
• Helps readers to more deeply understand how easily forms of banal evil can touch our lives within and beyond the classroom, and what we might do about it.
• Examines how systemic forces can influence “average” individuals to cause or contribute to great societal harm.
• Includes teacher-friendly engagements with theory, using examples from middle and high school classrooms.
• Offers a wide range of contexts related to social studies education, including civics, economics, geography, and history.

Cathryn van Kessel is an associate professor of curriculum studies at Texas Christian University and a former secondary social studies and Latin teacher from Canada. Kimberly Edmondson is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and a high school social studies teacher in Alberta, Canada.

“Extends previous work and casts a fresh light on researching villainification as a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, offering novel perspectives to approach villainification…. social studies educators and researchers will greatly benefit from the insights of this collection.”
—From the Foreword by Michalinos Zembylas, professor of educational theory and curriculum studies, Open University of Cyprus and honorary professor, chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation, Nelson Mandela University

“In this groundbreaking and brilliant book, van Kessel and Edmondson have assembled a wide array of scholars who demonstrate the ubiquity of villainification in societies. This is a highly relevant and significant book in our times of heightened division and conflict; the collection has important implications for educators, social scientists, and those interested in grappling with what lies beyond the simplistic concept of good versus evil.”
—Patricia G. Avery, professor emeritus, University of Minnesota

“From Marvel villains to social media to financial education to the Holocaust, this eclectic volume illuminates the potential of engaging with evil and villainification in social studies education. The scholars assembled by van Kessel and Edmonson ask us to shed dichotomous ways of thinking about good and evil, replacing it with reflection on the tensions between structure and agency and how their interplay can promote or resist systemic harm.”
—Ryan M. Crowley, associate professor, University of Kentucky

Contents

Foreword: The Problem of Villainification  Michalinos Zembylas  vii

Acknowledgments  xi

Introduction  1
Cathryn van Kessel and Kimberly Edmondson

PART I: VILLAINIFICATION AND SOCIAL STUDIES CURRICULUM

1.  Heroification, Villainification, and Political Polarization: Implications for Thinking Politically About U.S. Politics  13
WayneJournell

2.  “Incapable, Uninterested, and Ineffective”?: Locating Villainification Narratives in Financial Education  29
ErinC. Adams

3.  Will the Real Villain Please Stand Up?: Holocaust Education and Its Hidden Transgressors  45
RebeccaC. Christ, Brandon Haas, and Oren Baruch Stier

4.  Removing the Binaries in History Curricula and Teacher Education: Difficult-ishas an Antidote to Villainification and Its Partner, “Difficult Histories”  63
Brittany Jones

PART II: VILLAINIFICATION LESSONS FROM POPULAR CULTURE

5.  Subverting the Villain Trope in Apocalyptic Fiction: Survivance in MoonoftheCrustedSnow  79
Kimberly Edmondson and Keri Helgren

6.  “Hang On, So That Thing’s a Loki Too?”: Mimetic Materialities, Variants, and Villainy  95
BrettonA. Varga and ErinC. Adams

7.  Wanda the Villain?: How WandaVisionCan Aid Discussions About Enslavement and Anti-Black Racism  111
Danelle Adeniji, Melissa McQueen, and Cathryn van Kessel

PART III: SOCIOCULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF VILLAINIFICATION NARRATIVES

8.  Can Technology Be Evil?: Heroes, Villains, and the Banality of Technology  127
RyanM. Smits and DanielG. Krutka

9.  Identifying the Villain: Antivillainification, Social Studies, and LGBTQ Individuals  145
Heather P. Abrahamson

10.  Anti-Complicity Education: Combating Supervillains and Lesser Villains in Contemporary Rape Culture  161
AmandaM.E. Thomson

11.  Placial Villains: Naming, Memorial Geographies of Invasion, and the Work of Social Studies  181
Bryan Smith

12.  Horses, Heretics, and Madame Déficit: The Historical Villainification of the Female Body  197
Andrew Thomson

Concluding Thoughts  213
Cathryn van Kessel and Kimberly Edmondson

About the Editors and Contributors  215

Index  219