Sponsored by the Adaptation Studies Forum, this guaranteed panel in the upcoming 2026 Modern Language Association conference will explore the intersection of race and adaptation, focusing particularly on film. The panel will engage in dialogue about how filmic adaptations convey, obscure, and transform racial meanings. They will also connect this conversation about racial representations in filmic adaptations to the theoretical question of how race, racism, and antiracism adapt to changing conditions, manifesting in new forms in new social contexts. We will pay particular attention to the dynamic of racial representation in film, a medium that critics such as Richard Dyer have shown to be influential in creating racial imaginaries. 

Panelists will engage, both in their prepared and informal remarks, with the following questions:

• What does adaptation studies contribute to critical race studies?
• What racial work is performed within specific adaptations?
• What does critical race studies contribute to adaptation studies?
• How does the medium of film affect racial representations?
• How does race, as a social construct and strategy of biopolitical control, adapt within different social and aesthetic contexts?

Please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio to Arianna Qianru James (aqjames@sas.upenn.edu) by March 15, 2025.