We spotlight Prof. Lara Saguisag, the Georgiou Chair in Children's Literature and Literacy at NYU Steinhardt. In a compelling conversation with Ran Mei, our graduate assistant and a doctoral student in Food Studies, Prof. Saguisag reflects on her path from children's book author to literary scholar and climate justice educator. She discusses how stories shape ecological awareness, the power of youth literature, and what it means to teach sustainability through a lens of justice, reciprocity, and resistance.
Ran: Thank you so much for making time for this interview! We’re excited to feature you in the first issue of our Sustainability Group newsletter. Before we begin, is there anything you’d like to share with our audience to set up the conversation?
Lara: Thank you, Ran. I’m grateful for the opportunity. I should start by saying that I don’t usually describe my work using the term “sustainability.” I think my work aligns with sustainability studies, but I more often describe my work as climate education, or more specifically, climate justice education.
Ran: I really appreciate that clarification. “Sustainability” is such a broad term that it sometimes feels abstract or even depoliticized. I’d love to start with your journey. How did you come to focus on children’s literature, comics, and climate justice?
Lara: The environment has always mattered to me, but it wasn’t at the center of my academic life early on. I loved nature, sure—I went hiking, I cared about mining and logging issues in the Philippines where I grew up—but my focus was on children’s literature and comics. I wanted to write books and comics for children. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t comfortable with the marketing side of publishing, and I pivoted to academia. That allowed me to study the stories I loved critically, to explore their contradictions. Some of our most beloved texts are also deeply problematic—they may have racist, sexist, imperialist undertones. It became important for me to take children’s literature seriously as cultural work.
After finishing my first book, which looked at childhood and citizenship in Progressive Era comics, I started casting around for a new project. Around 2018 or 2019, I was suddenly overwhelmed by climate anxiety. I would sit and worry about what would happen to my family back in the Philippines in the face of extreme climate events. That grief and fear pushed me to merge my love of children’s literature with environmental questions.
Ran: That makes so much sense, especially with the rise of youth climate activism around that time. How do you see children’s literature and comics cultivating ecological awareness and climate justice?
Lara: My current research focuses on children’s books about oil and gas. I initially thought I would be looking exclusively at books produced in the 21st century, but I started finding books and comics about oil going back to the 1930s—and these children’s texts celebrated oil as a miracle energy source, as fueling the “American dream.” So now my project is becoming more historical, tracing how these narratives evolved.
Sustainability is about learning how to share power. It’s about learning how to transfer wealth. That’s what justice looks like.
More broadly, I’m interested in how children’s books help young people relate to the more-than-human world. There’s been a powerful movement to diversify children’s literature, and that’s opened up more space for Indigenous voices. These books often narrativize a different kind of relationship with the natural world—one based on reciprocity, kinship, and learning from nature.
Ran: You’ve also done a lot with curriculum development related to climate change and children’s rights. What are some strategies you find effective in teaching climate justice through literature and media?
Lara: I’m still learning! But I try to center justice in everything I teach. That means disrupting dominant environmental narratives that come from wealthy, white, global North perspectives. I strive to emphasize voices of Indigenous, Black, and Global South activists, writers, artists, and scholars.
I also try to find ways to take the learning outside the classroom and into communities. I haven’t perfected this yet, but I believe that understanding justice requires more than theory—it needs to also consider lived experiences.
Ran: And in your classes at NYU, what are some texts, authors, or assignments that particularly resonate with your students when it comes to environmental issues?
Lara: One novel students really respond to is The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. It’s a post-apocalyptic Indigenous climate novel that connects historical and contemporary colonialism. It’s beautifully written and challenging in all the right ways.
Another activity I assign, if time and resources allow, is a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian, specifically the ImagiNATIONS Activity Center, which highlights Indigenous knowledge and technologies. It’s a playful, hands-on space that pushes students to rethink what we tend to count as “technology.”
Ran: Fascinating! I’m adding these onto my list. What challenges have you encountered in bringing environmental topics into humanities classrooms—and how have you navigated them?
Lara: Not major resistance, but there’s often hesitation. Many students haven’t talked much about climate change before, or they feel overwhelmed and depressed by it. Literature can help. Poems, stories—they give language to things we struggle to articulate. They give students permission to feel and reflect. That’s crucial.
Ran: It really is. Especially in the humanities, we’re often left with the question: “What now?” after a discussion. What role can imaginative storytelling play in fostering hope or agency in the face of crisis?
Lara: Humanities often get devalued compared to STEM fields. But I think the humanities is crucial to centering justice in climate change discourse. I also see the study of literature as a practice of paying attention to details. The careful reading of literature may help us cultivate the habit of slowing down in a world that’s constantly rushing.
And literature also documents resistance. It teaches us how people have survived, resisted, and built solidarity under oppressive conditions. Those are stories of hope. That’s where we learn how to build community, how to remain resilient.
Ran: One final question—what advice would you give to other humanities scholars who want to integrate sustainability into their work?
Lara: Start with inclusion. Be intentional about the texts and voices you center—especially those from marginalized communities. That helps us interrogate dominant definitions of sustainability, which too often reflect white, affluent priorities. We need to ask: whose priorities are we centering? And who gets left out?
Ran: Thank you so much. This has been incredibly generous and inspiring.
Lara: Thank you, Ran. It’s been a pleasure.
