Call for Papers: Special Issue of Literature/Film Quarterly on “Female Adaptations, Female Sources”

Guest Editor: Betty Kaklamanidou (Aristotle University)

What do Passing (Netflix 2021), The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu 2017-2025), Big Little Lies (HBO 2017-2019), Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu 2020), and Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV+ 2023) all have in common? Beyond being recent critically-acclaimed works of film and television, they are all adaptations of female-authored novels, most directed by women or featuring women directors prominently in their creative teams. These titles reflect a recent trend: a preponderance of film and television adaptations based on women’s stories, from Mudbound (2017) and A Wrinkle in Time (2018) to Little Women (2019) and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (2023), with female directors increasingly choosing to adapt women’s literary works.

Although certainly not new, the recent resurgence of female-authored cinematic productions adapted from women’s literary texts presents an opportunity to examine with new eyes the circulation of female subjectivity, agency, desire, and sexuality in popular media. These works invite analysis of their specific approaches to plot, character development, historical context, as well as their distinctive themes and stylistic choices.  

Scholarship on this subject remains limited despite its cultural significance. Shelley Cobb’s Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers (2014), Katarzyna Paszkiewicz’s Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers (2018), Jamie Barlowe’s Silent Film Adaptations of Novels by British and American Women Writers, 1903–1929 (2024), alongside Sarah Louise Smyth’s “Reese Witherspoon’s Popular Feminism: Adaptation and Authorship in Big Little Lies” (2023) and “Adaptation, Authorship and the Critical Conversations of Little Fires Everywhere” (2023)—such works have begun to illuminate how the behind-the-camera female perspective offers insights into complex representations of women’s experiences while incorporating distinctive aesthetic approaches. 

Although male directors have offered us paradigmatic female protagonists in the past and present, the question remains: what happens when a woman’s novel is adapted to the screen by a woman director? This question in turn invites further inquiries: 

-       Do female directors actively seek to adapt female-authored stories? To what end?

-       Is there a distinctive female gaze in adaptations of women’s literature?

-       How does this manifest in narrative structure, cinematography, editing, and other formal devices?

These questions are the basis for this special issue of Literature/Film Quarterly on “Female Adaptations, Female Sources.”

Possible topics include:

• Female-authored film and TV productions adapted from novels written by women
• Feminist approaches to adaptation and authorship
• Gendered and adaptation theory[DK1] 
• Transnational and cross-cultural adaptations of women’s stories
• Comparative studies of female- versus male-directed adaptations of the same source text
• Women-led adaptations and film/television aesthetics
• Historical perspectives on women adapting women’s work
• Early cinema and adaptation: pioneering female filmmakers like Alice Guy and Lois Weber
• Documentary treatments and biographical films about female authors
• Female screenwriters adapting female authors
• Failed or abandoned adaptations of female-authored works

 Submission Guidelines:

• Abstracts (300–500 words) and a short bio (150 words) should be submitted to Betty Kaklamanidou at kaklamad@film.auth.grby March 1, 2026. Please include a brief theoretical/methodological framework and a couple of main references in your submission.
• Upon receipt of the abstracts, you may be invited to submit a full article, and you will know this by the end of March.
• Full drafts (5,000–7,000 words) will be due by September 30, 2026.
• Finished articles will be peer reviewed over the course of 3-4 months and those accepted will be published within a year of acceptance.
• For questions, please contact Betty Kaklamanidou at kaklamad@film.auth.gr

Bibliography

Barlowe, Jamie. Silent Film Adaptations of Novels by British and American Women Writers, 1903–1929. Routledge, 2024.

Cobb, Shelley. Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna. Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Smyth, Sarah Louise. “Adaptation, Authorship and the Critical Conversations of Little Fires Everywhere.” Critical Studies in Television 18, no. 3 (2023): 248–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2023.2264711.

Smyth, Sarah Louise. “Reese Witherspoon’s Popular Feminism: Adaptation and Authorship in Big Little Lies.” Critical Studies in Television 18, no. 3 (2023): 231–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2023.2263690.