Film Adaptation

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• selected recent adaptations that have been significant for their critical success, box-office success and/or cultural impact.
• key intellectual debates regarding authorship of adaptations.
• the politics of gender, race, and class that these films and their sources raise.
• the intellectual, cultural and production contexts that have influenced the ways we understand, appreciate and analyze adaptations.
• demonstrate an understanding of adaptation theory and a critical awareness of the scholarly debates regarding film adaptation.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• evaluate and draw on appropriate secondary sources to inform and enlarge written contributions
• conduct independently a range of relevant research in support of your work.
• write critically, reflectively and cogently about the central debates in a specialised area of study.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• integrate textual analysis of both the source text and the film text that comprise an adaptation.
• conduct a comparative analysis of different critical approaches to film adaptation
• critically situate the specific film adaptations in their cultural and historical context.

In this unit you will examine both ‘classic’ and 'popular' novel adaptations, alongside remediations of at least one of the following: television, videogames, comic book, biography, social media. The course will develop your theoretical understanding of authorship, identity, intertextuality, genre, remediation, world building and the politics of adaptation. You will consider the source texts and their relationships to the films in order to examine how the adaptations engage with their cultural context.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include:

1) lectures that will introduce the theories of adaptation, as well as the specific texts and the relevant issues of their cultural context

2) seminars in which group discussion will further develop specific issues arising from the texts and for which the lectures and reading will have provided some preparation

3) screenings of films assigned and clips shown from additional relevant films

4) opportunities for individual consultation with tutor at identified times during the week

Learning activities include:

1) independent study and careful reading, viewing and consideration of assigned texts

2) participation in seminar discussions both as leader and listener/speaker who is able to engage with and respond to alternative viewpoints and questions

3) preparation for and completion of two coursework essays

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Thomas Leitch (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies. Oxford University Press.

Linda Hutcheon (2013). A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge.

Assessment strategy

The two essay assignments will assess your knowledge and understanding that you have developed through lectures, readings, and seminars.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External