The Fan Studies Network

We are soliciting contributions for the new Routledge Companion to Adaptation.  The book is under contract, and publication is expected in late 2016 or early 2017.

As a Routledge Companion, this book will offer a wide-ranging overview or perspective on current critical approaches and discourses as well as develop new perspectives as and when appropriate. It will still include source-oriented studies, such as novel-to-stage, film-musical-to-stage-musical etc., but it will go beyond the confines of such parameters by structuring itself around adaptive attitudes, processes and histories. Thus, instead of focusing entirely on the rather limiting and limited singular case-study approach so common in Adaptation Studies to date, its emphasis will be on the “big questions” of adaptation, the history of adaptation, and on adaptation as scholarly practice.

We are looking for contributions under the following headings:

Historiography
This section will broadly fall into two sections: the history of adaptation, and adaptation as historiography.  Proposals which deal with one of the following are particularly welcome:

·         Adaptation in a pre- and post- copy-right context (for example, an analysis of stage adaptations pre-1886-Berne Convention)

·         Adaptation and changing notions of the author and authorship

·         Adaptation and the concept of the original

·         Adaptation and the archive

·         Marginalisations of adaptation histories

·         Critical history of attitudes toward adaptation as a creative form

·         Massive texts and/as adaptation

·         Defining adaptation as a function of History

Geography
This section will address adaptation in terms of global politics and power relations. Proposals which fall under the following headings, and include an assessment of non-western practices, are particularly welcome, as are investigations of the relationship between first, second and third world flows of adaptation:

·         Mapping of adaptation activities in terms of political hegemonies

·         Mapping of adaptation activities in terms of ideological hegemonies

·         Mapping of adaptation activities in terms of cultural hegemonies

·         Adaptation of / in space and place

·         Adaptation and notions of diaspora

·         Cultural adaptations and adapting culture

·         Defining adaptation as a function of place

Identity
Adaptation changes identities, but may also be described as a function of Identity-building. Adaptations are shaped by individual, often idiosyncratic choices, but are also crucially determined by contexts of identity politics and cultural ideologies (and in turn intervene in these fields). This section invites contributions that address the interplay of adaptation and identity on a variety of classic sociocultural levels (nation, ethnicity, class, gender, age).Furthermore, this section will question the binary established between source and adaptation and instead, investigate text as a site of multiple identities:

·         Adaptation, nation and heritage

·         Adaptation and ethnicity

·         Adaptation and class

·         Adaptation and acculturation

·         Gendered adaptation

·         Idiosyncrasy and adaptation (originality)

·         Age and adaptation (identity formation, youth, young adult markets, other age groups)

Technology
Adaptation must be, necessarily, intertwined with and embedded in uses and displays of technology. This section aims to investigate the relationship between adaptation and technology not only with regards to specific adaptions but also whether and to what extent the nature of technology available shapes the process, the product, and the reception of adaptation.

·         Defining adaptation as a function of technology

·         Adaptation in temporal (i.e. novel, drama, moving image) and spatial arts (i.e. photography, painting, installation)

·         Stage technologies and adaptation (puppets, opera, laterna magica, shadow play etc.)

·         Adaptation, intermediality and media specificity (adaptation as transcoding)

·         Intramedial adaptation ( screenwriting, illustrated books, poetry-into-novel, drama-into-poetry, pastiche, simplified versions, bowldlerisation, censorship))

·         Adaptation and transmediality (social media, franchises, crossing media borders, ekphrasis, filmed theatre, ‘theatred’ film)

·         Adaptation and serialization (serialized novels, TV)

·         The sounds of adaptation (radio, audiobooks, music)

Adaptation and new visual cultures (videogames, graphic novels)

Reception

All adaptations are “receptions,” from one perspective, but this section of the book will focus specifically on the structuring and de-structuring consequences of recognizing that adaptations exist only in their reception and recognition. 

·         Defining adaptation in terms of reception

·         Adaptation as ‘enacted reception’

·         Familiarity and recognition

·         Adaptation and memory

·         Adaptation of scholarly or critical contexts

·         ‘Phantom’ adaptations

·         Fan fiction and film as adaptation

Please, send a 300-500 word abstract toadaptationcompanion@hotmail.com no later than 17 April 2015.

If your proposal is accepted for inclusion in the Companion, you will be notified during May 2015. We expect the chapters to be submitted in September 2015 with an aim to publish the Companion by 2016/17. A more detailed time-line will be made available to authors once their proposals have been accepted.

With best wishes from the editorial team, Dennis Cutchins, Katja Krebs and Eckart Voigts

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