Editors’ Note

In A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon describes the term “adaptation” as “[a]n acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works” (2016, p. 8), pointing out that adaptations attract the audience by arousing pleasure and encouraging a reevaluation. One can easily perceive and interpret the original literary work’s intricate relationship with its adaptation through his/her experience and knowledge of the earlier. Adaptations are relished as they revive recognized narratives and stories in a new format, genre and medium. However, “the adaption is not an act of sly plagiarism; it is a deliberate and self-conscious attempt to engage with an original text and offer a new approach or direction. Another attraction of adaptation is the opportunity it offers for presenting texts in a new context” (Rees, 2017, p. 3).
Particularly, postmodernism laid the necessary theoretical and cultural foundation for adaptations, revisions and other forms of reworkings by turning them into common practices. As Hutcheon puts it, “We postmoderns have clearly inherited this same habit, but we have even more new materials at our disposal” (2006, p. xi). Yet, this literary inheritance is problematic and controversial because an adaptation is often outshined by the source text, accused of unoriginality or biased by readers, audiences or critics. Two terms, adaptation and appropriation, have often generated conflicting definitions and delineations as the relationship between them is overlapping and multi-layered. Julie Sanders proposes some necessary clues for the points of divergence. She states that “[a]ppropriation frequently affects a more decisive journey away from the informing text into a wholly new cultural product and domain, often through the actions of interpolation and critique as much as through the movement from one genre to others” (2006, p. 35). That is, appropriation can be more creative and divergent by obfuscating or breaking off the organic link with the source.


The audience and readers oscillate between the existing source and new variants, and they often tend to recognize or explore the various layers of overlaps, parallels and deviations. Transferring and translating the original text’s culture, history, and characters to the audience or reader is a serious work, thus it is necessary to have an awareness of both cultures, languages, texts, and historical periods. In the fields of drama and theatre, adapting or appropriating Shakespeare’s masterpieces has also been a tremendously popular choice for ages. Especially contemporary plays foreground and reconstruct Shakespearean drama in new plots and temporalities, which provide the audience with a new experience of the Shakespearean world in contemporary settings. In the same fashion, the adaptations and translations of modern dramatic texts offer a fruitful premise for researchers. Furthermore, contemporary theatre and film have long been enchanted by eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature, new histories and historiographies of which have found a safer place in popular culture and mainstream theatre.

In light of the above introduction, this special issue aims to attract papers, investigating the functions, possibilities, limits, and strategies of adaptation/appropriation/translation within theatre/film/media/literary studies. This special issue welcomes the topics below but not limited to: 

•  Adaptation and the concepts of the original
• Approaches to and perspectives on adaptation, appropriation, translation and cultural/literary appropriation
• Adaptation, appropriation and translation in theatre/performance
• Adaptation, appropriation and translation in Film, Media and Performance Studies
• History and Historiography as dramatic adaptation
• Translation and cultural transfer in drama and theatre
• Cross-cultural theories of adaptation: different significances of the term adaptation' in different cultures
• Adaptation as a form of cultural/literary (re)negotiation
• Adaptation, transmediality, intermediality, intermodality and screened performance
• Translation, adaptation, and digital media
•  Appropriating biography
• Aesthetics and politics in transtextual/transgeneric adaptation
• Adaptation, intertextuality and (re)defining adaptation studies
  
• Worldwide Shakespeares and local appropriations
• Reproducing and adapting Shakespeare in the 21st century
• The impact of theoretical/literary movements including modernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, feminism, queer studies or post-theories on adaptation and adaptation studies
• Memories in and of adaptations: memorializing, invoking or calling back through adaptations
• Cultural diversity and inclusiveness in theatre and adaptation studies
• Adaptation and re-locating narratives, untold stories, and relived memories
  
• Appropriations, political interventions, creative subversions, and conversations (Re)narrating the past as an ethical decision
• Ecological/Ecocritical/Posthuman adaptation and appropriation

The manuscripts, limited to 10,000 words should be prepared in accordance with the publication rules and principles of Selçuk University Faculty of Letters (SEFAD). All papers will undergo double blind review. The language of this special issue article is English.

Deadlines:
Submission of manuscripts: 20 August-31 October 2024 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/sefad

Guest Editors:
Dr. Alex Sierz, FRSA
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Işıl ŞAHİN GÜLTER