In this collection, scholars from the United States, Canada and Australia examine the concepts of villainification and anti-villainification in social studies curriculum, popular culture, as well as within sociocultural contexts and their implications.

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

“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