In this collection, scholars from the United States, Canada, and Australia examine the concepts of villainification and anti-villainification 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. Anti-villainification 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.

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