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).

This paper investigates the intersection between female sexuality and natural elements in contemporary illustrated books, adopting an ecofeminist perspective that foregrounds the connections between the disciplining of women's bodies and the exploitation of nature as parallel outcomes of the same patriarchal and anthropocentric system. The starting point of the analysis is Il piacere (2020) by Maria Hesse, a work that traces the history of female pleasure through an iconographic apparatus in which bodies and natural landscapes merge into a visual and symbolic continuum. The Spanish author and illustrator systematically employs botanical, aquatic, and ecological metaphors to restore narrative dignity to a desire historically silenced, constructing an imaginary in which the reappropriation of pleasure coincides with a reconnection to the natural world. In works such as Il Piacere and other illustrated books addressing menstruation, desire, and bodily autonomy, flowers, seeds, tides, forests, and ecosystems become metaphors not of biological determinism but of relationality, cyclicality, and interdependence. The body is represented as a dynamic ecosystem rather than a passive object of surveillance. Pleasure, in particular, emerges as an epistemic category capable of disrupting disciplinary and capitalist logics that frame sexuality primarily in terms of risk, productivity, or consumption.

Building on this text, the paper broadens its scope to other illustrated nonfiction works that share a similar representational strategy, including Katharina Hotter, Lisa Sonnberger and Flo Staffelmayr’s picturebook Lina l’esploratrice (2022), and contemporary illustrated books such as Post pink. Antologia di fumetto femminista (2019), in which the femininity interweaves the vegetal world.

Methodologically, the paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining iconotextual analysis with ecofeminist criticism, drawing on the thought of Val Plumwood, Carolyn Merchant, and Vandana Shiva, who have theorized the structural nexus between the domination of nature and the domination of women. Within this framework, the visual representation of female sexuality through natural metaphors is not read as an essentialist reduction of the feminine to the biological, but rather as a countercultural strategy that subverts the nature/culture dualism upon which the logic of domination is founded.

The paper aims to demonstrate that the analyzed works perform an implicit educational function: by offering non-normative representations of sexuality and of the relationship with nature, they challenge anthropocentric and patriarchal views and propose alternative models grounded in the recognition of interdependence between the human and the non-human. In this sense, these texts operate as tools of gender eco-pedagogy, capable of fostering critical reflection on both ecological justice and gender discussion.

This contribution is dedicated to one of the most problematic issues in the long and arduous journey towards gender equality: the difficult relationship between women and education. In particular, it analyses female education and the teaching profession between the 19th and 20th centuries. For a long time, girls’ entry into education was a complex and ambiguous process. Although legislation provided for equality between girls and boys, compulsory education was often evaded, penalising girls more, who were useful in the domestic economy and perceived as future housewives. The teaching profession was an almost unattainable goal for young women aspiring to become teachers, who were considered more suited to lower-level female education and, even with the same qualifications, location and teaching class, received a lower salary than male teachers, which was even lower if they taught in rural schools. It has also been noted that female teachers often, if not always, became the subject of prejudice and heavy social control, especially when they found themselves working in small rural or mountain villages. Women’s work in education was a slow path to emancipation, and even in the 1950s, discrimination and wage disparities between men and women were still present in the world of education, which would only be overcome at the end of the 20th century. In this regard, we have chosen to propose a historical-pedagogical reading of All for Love of Teaching as a significant testimony to these gender issues. Through the biographical story of Giuseppa/Josephine, from post-unification Sicily to 20th-century America, the book intertwines individual and collective history, providing an insight into the condition of women and the teaching profession between the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the text highlights the persistent structural inequalities that permeate the teaching profession: wage disparities, contractual precariousness, moral control, and the prohibition of marriage for teachers. The teacher thus emerges as an ambivalent figure: invested with a central public function in the education of citizens, but at the same time limited by legal and cultural constraints that reduce her full citizenship. Over the long period spanning almost a century, Josephine’s story shows how teaching can be a practice of resistance and democratic responsibility. School becomes a place for literacy, social advancement and the development of civic awareness, but also a space of tension with regard to contemporary cultural changes. The volume thus allows us to reinterpret women’s educational work as a crossroads between emancipation, professionalism and commitment to inclusive democracy.

According to Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy (1998), «ecofeminism is a practical movement for social change arising out of the struggles of women to sustain themselves, their families, and their communities. These struggles are waged against the “maldevelopment” and environmental degradation caused by patriarchal societies, multinational corporations, and global capitalism.». In this sense, ecofeminism is, by definition, oriented toward eco-social change. In fact, despite the plurality of ecofeminist perspectives, they all share the aspiration to identify concrete alternatives to environmental exploitation and social oppression. Within this framework, ecofeminist youth fiction represents a particularly effective educational tool for facilitating such a transformative process, especially by engaging young people, who are the protagonists of the future. In recent decades, alongside the consolidation of ecofeminist literary criticism as an interdisciplinary field of research (Campbell, 2008; Donovan, 1996; Gaard, 2013; Gaard & Murphy, 1998; Vakoch, 2022), several empirical studies conducted in educational contexts have demonstrated that the reading of ecofeminist fiction can significantly influence worldviews and representations of the future (Kostecka, 2025; Deininger, 2023; Echegoyen-Sanz, Pont-Niclòs & Martín-Ezpeleta, 2025). From this perspective, ecofeminist fiction for young readers may be interpreted as a pedagogical resource capable of challenging hegemonic worldviews, while promoting a commitment to concrete action for social and environmental change.

This contribution explores the transformative potential of ecofeminist fiction drawing on the graphic novel Il limite del mondo (2023) by Barbara Borlini and Francesco Memo. Il limite del mondo is a double-sided book, a volume with two covers and two autonomous stories that unfold in opposite directions and meet at the center of the book. Both stories address the issue of climate change through the depiction of a dystopian future, which is narrated by two young characters facing a crisis that the older generation has created but cannot resolve. The choice to employ a graphic novel reflects the direct and engaging nature of the comic book language, which can be highly effective in depicting complex scenarios such as the ecological crisis, facilitating critical interpretation and emotional engagement.

The analysis of Il limite del mondo focuses in particular on two aspects: the recognition of the interdependence of the web of life and the construction of the young protagonists’ agency. It is precisely through their growing awareness of the connections between human beings, other animals, and the planet that the two characters learn to imagine alternatives to their present situation and to take action aimed at transforming reality. This graphic novel can therefore be interpreted as a significant example of contemporary ecofeminist youth fiction capable not only of promoting values of inclusivity and environmental sustainability, but also of encouraging the implementation of concrete actions toward more equitable and sustainable futures, thus embodying a pedagogical approach aligned with ecological and gender justice.

The paper will examine the child body and the ambiguity of its representations in contemporary children's texts: child body is, beginning in the early twentieth century, essentially "other" body, because it is in connection with dimensions, such as animal and plant, that are considered distant from the human - among others, the "aquatic" children of certain literature would be a clear example - and therefore imperfect and "defective." A representation that cracks and fragments the image of the beautiful and healthy child, "all liveliness and health," which is often inherent in the "latent pedagogies" of the adult world, but, at the same time, opens the way for meaningful reflections. The hybrid child body recounted in literature reveals how child bodies are extraordinarily open and metamorphic and revealing, on closer inspection, of the profound connection between "us" and its opposite, between the human and the non-human, natural and plant, opening the way for a radical rethinking of human nature itself.

In the short essay Ecofeminism and Children, Ruthanne Kurth-Schai highlighted the systematic exclusion of children from political and social participation within their community, which remains deeply “adult-centered [and] age-segregated […] that better serves the political and economic interests of powerful adults” (1997: 194). This exclusion, mirroring the parallel and centuries-long marginalisation of women from decision-making roles and positions of power, has resulted in the placement of both groups at the lowest levels of social hierarchies, alongside the broad category of non-human nature.

Consequently, like Kurth-Schai, a number of activists and scholars in recent years have emphasised the fundamental importance of fostering a relationship between children and nature. A notable example is Rachel Carson who in 1956, in The Sense of Wonder, recounted the reactions of her nephew Roger during their explorations of the natural world, noting the child’s instinctive tendency to perceive himself as an integral part of the surrounding environment. Even earlier – and moving more specifically into the field of (eco-)pedagogy – the educational thought of Maria Montessori drew attention to children’s need to “live” nature through direct and practical experience, in addition to encountering it through fairy tales. (De Carlo and Pugacheva 2021: 174). Fairy tales, however, have long reinforced – often from a male perspective – the parallel subordination of nature and women, narrating a presumed biological connection between them and at times even personifying the former in the latter. In Gyn/Ecology, perhaps one of the best-known (and also most criticised) works in ecofeminist literature, Mary Daly offered a brief analysis of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, observing how the tree – “referred to by the pronoun she” – is portrayed as an active and cheerful participant in her own mutilation, effectively turning the story into “one of female rape and dismemberment” (1978: 90).

Building on these premises, the paper aims to reflect on the richness and validity of ecofeminist perspectives as critical frameworks for the interpretation of children’s literature. Drawing on a concrete workshop experience conducted in several middle schools in the province of Trieste, the paper also examines a number of specific case studies: three short stories by Caterina Percoto – La centifoglia, L’orecchio, and Riparazione – dating from the second half of the nineteenth century and presented to students as part of the practical workshop activities. Not coincidentally, this practical component was preceded by a seminar section – later developed into a handbook designed for schools – which focused on different global ecofeminist perspectives and sought to provide students with critical tools for interpreting the texts. Much like activism, which has often preceded theory within the constellation of ecofeminist ideas, the paper ultimately seeks to demonstrate how Percoto’s short stories represent an early example of the ways in which environmental literature for children can offer young readers “an antidote to the logic of domination” (Gaard 2009: 327).