Engagements With Adaptation

Engagements with Adaptation invites students both to consider adaptations on their own terms and to engage with the urgent questions they raise about literary canons; the media industry; the relations between different kinds of media; the nature of national, political, and cultural identities; and the ways in which contemporary digital and social media have complicated the roles of producers and consumers of texts.

Thomas Leitch guides students through six ways of thinking about adaptation: aesthetic, intertextual, industrial, biological, sociological, and participatory. He explores multiple media and discusses a wide range of sources, including Frankenstein, Persepolis, Bridgerton, and the world of DC and Marvel comics. Each of the six chapters includes a detailed discussion of Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie to help readers compare the ways in which these six approaches can engage with a single text. The book also offers invaluable insight into copyright, censorship, critical race theory, and immigration. The questions at the end of each section embed and reinforce learning and prompt further research.

This accessible and engaging guide reveals how the “anti- discipline” of adaptation studies is adjacent to a remarkable array of disciplines, making it a much-needed resource for students interested in television studies, moving image studies, digital media studies, translation studies, performance studies, music and art history and creation, border studies, race studies, queer studies, disability studies, and ecocritical studies.

Thomas Leitch holds the Unidel Andrew B. Kirkpatrick, Jr. Chair in Writing at the University of Delaware, USA. His most recent publications include The Scandal of Adaptation (2023) and The History of American Literature on Film (2019).