Adaptation

Saint Louis University—Madrid April 21-22

Adaptation is a term that bridges the divide between literature and evolution. Texts are adapted to speak to new circumstances as time advances and younger writers, directors, actors, artists, and audiences seek connections to a mutable culture. Likewise, organisms adapt over generations to better suit their circumstance.

Adaptation also presupposes a relationship to an original, a source. In organisms, unchecked replication can lead to distorted text, broken genetic code. In the age of infinite digital reproduction, of Tiktoks, NFTs,  AI-generated images or novels and so on, the concept of adaptation can generate productive conversations on the current role and nature of art. 

Have we irrevocably moved away from the notion of art as belonging to a particular time and space, having a unique context, what Benjamin called “aura”? Lawrence Venuti, who configures adaptation as translation, writes that “the interpretive force of a translation issues from the fact that the source text is not only decontextualized, but recontextualized” (Venuti 93). In nature as well as art, both the monstrous and the exquisite are born from these textual recontextualizations. 

This conference aims to approach adaptation in all its guises: The literary, the evolutionary, the personal. We seek stories of adaptation, criticism that approaches textual or theatrical adaptation, and presentations that explore the juncture between literary and evolutionary space.

Performance Studies, Literature and Science, Literary Adaptation, Genre-bending, Biosemiotics, Ecocriticism, Adaptation and Translation

Keynotes: Stephen O’Neill and John Holmes

Please send Abstracts of 250 words plus a bio in the body of an email by February 13th to timothy.day@slu.edu and olivia.badoi@slu.edu

Works cited

Venuti, Lawrence. “‘Adaptation, Translation, Critique.” Film and Literature an Introduction and Reader, edited by Timothy Corrigan, Routledge, New York, NY, 2012, pp. 93.