Film Adaptation: Culture and Context

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

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

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

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• conduct independently a range of relevant research in support of your work.
• participate thoughtfully and constructively in discussion of specific topics.
• write critically, reflectively and cogently about the central debates in a specialised area of study.

Cognitive Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• evaluate and draw on appropriate secondary sources to inform and enlarge written contributions.
• demonstrate an understanding of adaptation theory and a critical awareness of the scholarly debates regarding film adaptation.
• integrate textual analysis of both the source text and the film text that comprise an adaptation.
• critically situate the specific film adaptations in their cultural and historical context.

This unit examines recent film adaptations of the late 20th and early 21st cenutry, focusing on an American context, although with some inclusion of films from other national contexts. You will examine both ‘classic’ novel adaptations as well as ‘popular’ novel adaptations, alongside theories of authorship, identity, intertextuality and genre. You will consider the source texts and their relationships to the films in order to examine how the adaptations engage with their cultural context. While we will investigate issues regarding class, race, and sexuality pertinent to the contemporary context, the unit schedule is organized around gender and the cultural representation of masculinity and femininity. Example texts that may be included: Fight Club, The Handmaid's Tale, Brokeback Mountain, The Help, Bridget Jones, Love & Friendship.

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

Linda Hutcheon. A Theory of Adaptation.

Thomas Leitch. The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies.

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 Information

Repeat type: Internal & External