Screen Literature: Course Outline

1. Introduction: Definitions

• Why adapt?
• What is not an adaptation?
• What is the appeal of Adaptations?

2. New and Old Approaches to Adaptation

3. New modes of authorship, production, marketing, and consumption

4. “Metadaptation”

• Intertextuality

• Medium Specificity

• Memoir to Film
• Novel to Film

5. Questions of Genre and Marketability

• Distinctions between Film and Drama

6. Form, Style and Cinematic Space

7. Comic to Film Adaptations; Main Challenges;

• Differences in production and reception between the media of comic book art and film

8. Cultural, Social, Historical Adaptations

9. Cross Cultural Borrowings and Implications

Intercultural Theatre Colonialism and Commodification

10. Televisual Adaptations

• Industrial practices of Adaptation
• Localizing global programs; TV formats and national cultures
• Formats and the Globalization of International Property Rights

11. Television Programs Adapted into Films

12. Questions of Reception and Authority

• Who is “entitled” to adaptation?
• What properties or forces determine the economic value of a given literary property?
• Why aren’t there auteurs of adaptations

13. Europe and Hollywood;Race and Globalization

• From television miniseries to feature film

14. Questions of Gender and Sexuality

15. Group Evaluation Task

16. Recap of the Course