Conference Program

This paper explores the cinema of Hayao Miyazaki as a privileged site for an ecofeminist reading of childhood imaginaries, situated at the intersection of children’s literature, animation, and the history of educational thought. Ecofeminism is adopted here as an interpretative lens attentive to relational ethics, care, and responsibility toward the living world, in dialogue with foundational reflections on the intertwined domination of nature and vulnerable subjects (Shiva, 1988; Plumwood, 1993; Gaard, 2017). Within this perspective, narratives addressed to childhood are understood as symbolic and educational spaces in which imaginaries of coexistence and responsibility take shape, as already highlighted in studies on children’s literature and pedagogy (Faeti, 1986; Beseghi & Grilli, 2011).

Miyazaki’s films centre on young female protagonists such as Nausicaä (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), San (Princess Mononoke), and Ponyo (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea), whose trajectories articulate modes of growth grounded in interdependence, attentiveness, and shared vulnerability. As observed in eco-pedagogical readings of children’s narratives, these forms of growth are rooted in relational ways of knowing rather than in mastery or control (Gaard, 2009). Childhood emerges as a liminal and epistemological condition, a posture of openness and sensibility through which relationships with the living world are continuously negotiated, in line with pedagogical reflections on imagination and education (Faeti, 1986; Trisciuzzi, 2013).

Nature in Miyazaki’s cinema is configured as an active presence that shapes ethical and educational relations. Landscapes, forests, seas, and animal beings participate in the narrative as interlocutors and companions, sustaining fragile ecological balances, as documented in ecological readings of his films (Mayumi, Solomon & Chang, 2005; Boscarol, 2023). Within this narrative ecology, female child figures inhabit worlds marked by crisis and transformation, enacting forms of care that resonate with ecofeminist critiques of anthropocentrism and hierarchical dualisms (Plumwood, 1993; Gaard, Estok & Oppermann, 2013), as well as with more recent reflections on the gendered construction of the nature–culture divide (Del Gobbo, 2023).

Through the analysis of recurring archetypal figures – the girl-bird, the girl-wolf, and the girl-fish – the paper highlights metamorphosis as a key narrative and pedagogical device. Transformation appears as expansion and relational becoming, sustaining identities that remain open, porous, and interconnected with the more-than-human world, a theme already explored in ecofeminist and queer-ecological debates (Gaard, 2020). These figures embody forms of embodied knowledge rooted in experience, sensoriality, and emotional attunement, which are central to eco-pedagogical approaches attentive to nature and education (Frabboni, 1990; Dozza, 2018).

By situating Miyazaki’s work within a broader genealogy of children’s narratives attentive to nature, care, and relational ethics, the paper contributes to current ecofeminist dialogues across the history of education and children’s literature. The wildness of childhood emerges as an educational resource capable of sustaining imaginaries of coexistence and ecological responsibility, echoing both historical reflections on nature and education (Merchant, 2017) and contemporary studies on environmental imaginaries in children’s literature (Grilli, 2019; Trisciuzzi, 2020, Forni, 2022).