Transmedia Adaptations of Literary ‘Classics’ in 20th- and 21st-century Artistic Expression (Seminar NeMLA 2021, Philadelphie)

NeMLA 2021, Philadelphie, 11-14 Mars 2021

From L’Étranger by Albert Camus, to Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera and Leon Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a large number of literary works are finding a second life by being reimagined in a different medium, such as graphic novels, films, TV series, as well as video games, radio plays, and art installations. Critical and interpretive insights that form at the intersection of different media adaptations arise with the transposition of the source literary work by way of technique or temporal recontextualization. Particularly the study of adaptations of literary "classics" leads to new avenues of investigation: What motivates the remediation of works considered as literary "classics"? How does the process of adaptation interrogate understandings of a text’s classical status? How does the aesthetic experience reflected in adaptation choices influence epistemic and socio-cultural conceptions of the original text? 

This seminar invites contributions that reflect on the possibilities and limitations of the complex forms of trans/intermediality in 20th- and 21st-century adaptations of literary "classics" to interrogate notions of canonicity and classification of cultural production while also thinking critically about using source texts and their adaptations in the classroom. By way of a comparative and transmedial approach, we aim for a more comprehensive look at an array of artistic forms in multiple settings.

Possible paper topics include: 

- adaptations of literary texts to different types of media, including, but not limited to film, tv series, theater, art installations, graphic novels, video games, radio plays

- reimagination of classic(al) themes, tropes and characters in various (contemporary) media

- the implications of remediation for the (literary) genre of the original text source

- theories and aesthetics of adaptation and trans/intermediality

- issues of intertextuality, translation, and decolonization

- cross-cultural and multilingual adaptations

- multiple adaptations of one source text

- adaptation as a discipline

- adaptations in the classroom

Abstract of 250 words in English should be uploaded on the Online Submission System by September 30, 2020.

Decisions will be made shortly after the deadline.

For more information, feel free to contact verena.kick@georgetown.edu and/or jb2899@georgetown.edu.