UE US literature: adaptation and American culture

American Literature in Contemporary Popular Culture : A Transmedia Approach :

In this course, we study American literature by examining its place in contemporary culture, rather than merely considering it from the perspective of the otherness-related issues it represents. Our methodology exploits the concept of transmedia storytelling, to help us study the various modes that have allowed key texts in American literature to exist since their date of writing (Hollywood films, TV series, cyber media, etc). As a result, the course aims to better establish and define the role of canonical American literature in contemporary culture. For each case of transmedia version of a literary work studied as part of the course, special attention is paid to the relevance of the media transposition, as based on a close reading of the source work.

Gatsby exposed? The impact of Gatsby’s spectral presence in popular culture on contemporary perceptions of the novel.

Lolitas. Nabokov’s transmedia antonomasia.

Reading The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood, 1985) after The Testaments (2019), or, what is the impact of the media proliferation of handmaids on Atwood’s novel?

Flashback to the roots of dystopian science fiction: reading Philip K Dick and Ray Bradbury in the transmedia era.

Instant classics? Studying Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy through adaptations of their works.

Catch 22 in contemporary culture: promoting the universal anti-war novel?

Based on Henry James. Reading the novels through their author’s legacy in contemporary media culture.

Transmedia Adaptation and the Demand for Representation: Black Panther (Movement, Comic Book, Film Franchise).

Racializing Pop Culture in the Mediaverse: Watchmen (Moore, Snyder, Lindelof).

 Select bibliography:

Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. Second edition. The Critical Idiom series. Routledge, 2011.

Corrigan, Timothy. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Routledge, 2012.

Cutchins, Dennis R., Katja Krebs, and Eckart Voigts. The Routledge Companion to Adaptation. London: Routledge, 2018.

Geraghty, Christine. Now A Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama. Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.

Grossman, Julie and R. Barton Palmer, eds. Adaptation in Visual Culture: Images, Texts, and Their Multiple Worlds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006; Second edition (with Siobhan O’Flynn). New York: Routledge, 2013.

Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and its Discontents. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Leitch, Thomas. The History of American Literature on Film. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2019.

Murray, Simone. The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation. Routledge, 2013.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. Routledge, 2006.

Stam, Robert. Literature Through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation. Blackwell, 2005.