Julie Grossman (Le Moyne College)
gros@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel explores how adaptations resolve, reduce, or escalate conflicts in reinterpreting source texts and/or responding to a contemporary cultural context. What does it mean to succeed (or fail) when adaptations try to resolve conflicts? Discussions of adaptations across any media are welcome.

This panel explores adaptations that seek to resolve conflicts. Such conflicts might appear within source material; they might rise out of changed times that make earlier texts a site of difficulty for students, fans, readers, and viewers; or they might emerge from a contemporary media culture that samples or changes dramatically the content or tone of previous texts. How do adaptations engage in conflict resolution or otherwise grapple with conflict 1) to reinterpret hypotexts for more contemporary audiences; and 2) to address conflicts in society and in different contexts? What does it mean to succeed (or fail) when adaptations try to resolve conflicts?

Papers might explore HBO’s Watchmen or Mike Flanagan’s Fall of the House of Usher in their attempts to update treasured source texts to address conflicts in our world (race in America; the opioid drug crisis). Presentations could examine Heated Rivalry’s adaptation of sources to address conflicts in how we view sex, gender, and sports, or how Wuthering Heights creates new conflicts (including cognitive dissonance) when a filmmaker wishes to radically reinterpret source material based on their own proclivities. Discussions of adaptations across any media are welcome.