Adaptation

The question concerning originality is an old and tedious one. By focusing on practices of cinematic and media adaptation, this course wants to explore the radical hypothesis according to which originality is a mere theoretical abstraction.

The course begins with an overview of theories of cultural and media adaptation and then moves into different but interconnected thematic directions. Students map a variety of processes of adaptation that allow content, style, affect, and ideology to travel across media, cultural, and national boundaries. In doing so, this course explores the multiple ways in which cinematic and media works have been enriched and energized through their exchanges and relationships with other media (literature, theater, graphic novels, video games, memes, music videos, etc.).

Among the topics students address, there is the relationship between image and word, the dynamics of adaptation within the same medium and across different media, the possibility of adapting history, the politics of adaptation, and the proliferation and multiplication of adaptation practices within the contemporary media landscape. Throughout the course, by investigating the workings and impact of adaptations — and their role in reproducing, transforming, and reconfiguring specific media content — we reflect on the role of practices of adaptation within cultures at large.