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.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Aesthetic Engagements: Adaptation as Copy
2. Intertextual Engagements: Adaptation as Process
3. Industrial Engagements: Adaptation as Product
4. Biological Engagements: Adaptation as Evolution
5. Sociological Engagements: Adaptation as Border Crossing
6. Participatory Engagements: Adaptation as Play
Index
About the Author :
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).
Review :
‘In this highly innovative, deeply rich, and tightly concise, lucid study guide, Leitch brings his razor-sharp intellect, organizational clarity, and interrogative methodology to bear on the increasingly sprawling field of humanities adaptation studies. Authoritative and comprehensive, yet open and varied, Engagements with Adaptation offers students an ecumenical, up-to-the minute account of the field, varied disciplinary methodologies and numerous questions through which to enter and engage with adaptation theories, debates, approaches, and case studies themselves.’
Kamilla Elliott, Professor of Literature and Media, Lancaster University, UK
‘Adaptations can be found everywhere and in his superbly informed book Leitch ranges across media to examine different acts of engagement with them: as readers; as creators and producers; as social media performers; and as legal/critical boundary keepers. Organised around clear pathways and thought provoking questions, the book will help students and teachers but will be welcomed by the many others who engage with adaptations.’
Christine Geraghty, Emeritus Professor, University of Glasgow, UK and Honorary Research Fellow, Birkbeck College, UK
‘To date, the unequalled introduction to the history, complexities, and usefulness of adaptation studies across a variety of prospects, contexts and media types. Leitch skilfully and jovially guides the reader through both historical and contemporary media contexts where adaptation studies illuminate our current media landscape; in a book that is hugely edifying and exemplary well-structured.’
Niklas Salmose, Professor of Literatures in English and Vice Chair Department of Languages, Linnaeus University, Sweden
'Prolific and tireless, erudite and enlightened, Thomas Leitch is offering yet another must-read gem in adaptation studies (and humanities as a whole for that matter) with Engagements with Adaptation. Anyone who’s ever read even a single article by Leitch will instantly recognize his signature style: clarity and accessibility combined with an impressive literature review and enviable research. The questions that accompany each section/chapter are not just food for thought or classroom exercises but veritable subjects of monographs, collections and articles. This is not just another book in the literature of adaptation studies. It is an impeccable study that ensures that the field will be around for decades to come.'
Betty Kaklamanidou, Professor in Film and Television Theory and History, Aristotle University, Greece
'Engagements with Adaptation by Thomas Leitch is essential reading for anyone teaching or studying adaptations. Film, media, and literary scholars interested in textual and cultural transformations will gobble up this brilliantly insightful and beautifully written volume. The book’s depth and accessibility (including questions for study following each section and an application of multiple approaches to readings of Barbie [2023] to conclude each chapter) make it ideal not only for teaching adaptation, but also for thinking about how we engage with culture, art, and media while valuing diversity, play, agency, and change.’
Julie Grossman, Professor in the Departments of English and Communication and Film Studies, Le Moyne College
‘Engagements with Adaptation combines a sweeping review of foundational and current scholarship with references to a broad set of examples ranging from canonical to current. It poses questions that probe key concepts in adaptation studies, tracing the major debates and developments that situate adaptation at the nexus of literature, media, performance, translation, and other interrelated disciplines. A Swiss army knife of a field primer, Engagements with Adaptation addresses itself directly at students and scholars seeking a comprehensive toolkit to examine adaptation as it is currently understood across academic disciplines. This book shows not just how, but why adaptation has become inextricable from the wider practice of cultural studies, making a clear case for adaptation as a staple of humanities education.’
Colleen Kennedy-Karpat, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Design, Bilkent University, Turkey
