Conference

LFA /AAS ONLINE 2024: ADAPTING IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

THIRD ANNUAL JOINT LITERATURE / FILM ASSOCIATION & ASSOCIATION FOR ADAPTATION STUDIES CONFERENCE

ONLINE

Conference Program  |  Registration

FEBRUARY 22-24, 2024

Adaptation scholars constantly swap anecdotes about what it’s like teaching adaptations of Jane Austen or the Marvel Universe, but surprisingly few of their conference presentations focus on the pedagogy of adaptation. So the organizers of this year’s online joint conference of the Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies—Julie Grossman, Peter Kunze, Thomas Leitch, Seda Öz, John Sanders, and Allen Redmon—invite anyone who’s ever taught adaptations, or adaptation, to share their experiences with audiences who may be far distant geographically but are likely to be highly sympathetic professionally. The conference, scheduled for 22–24 February 2024, aims to foster more global conversations among adaptation teachers and scholars, promote closer interaction between the Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies, and invite participation from active members of either organization who would not normally consider traveling far away for an in-person conference. Although all presentations will be in English, we hope the event’s online format will attract colleagues from around the globe, interested peers in related fields, and anyone else who wants to learn more about contemporary adaptation studies.

The success of the first two joint conferences of the LFA and the AAS has made us aware that virtual conferences, though they cannot serve all the same social and networking functions as face-to-faces conferences, are themselves indispensable adaptive mutations that serve certain important tasks—especially bringing people together who would be unable or unwilling to travel to a live conference—better than the conferences they rapidly replaced in the Covid era. We hope that online events assembling an ever more diverse network of adaptation scholars, a supplement rather than a replacement for our in-person conferences, might take their place as part of a new normal that exploits new possibilities for discussions of ideas that could blossom in and out of the classroom.

We invite abstracts for ten-minute presentations that deal with any aspect of adaptation. We are especially interested in the opportunities and problems that arise when participants teach adaptations. But we do not wish to exclude adaptation scholars with other matters on their minds. So presentations for the conference may focus on teaching particular adaptations or adaptation as a more general practice, or they may highlight archives, performances, and networks, borders and contact zones, divisions and bridges, epistemological and phenomenological experiences, new media and transmedia, linearity, spatiality, and seriality, and challenges, defenses, and alternatives to the humanities. We particularly encourage submissions on the following topics:

  • introducing students to adaptations
  • teaching adaptations in literature courses
  • teaching adaptations as supplements or substitutes
  • teaching adaptations in different national settings
  • teaching adaptations vs. teaching adaptation
  • nurturing budding adaptation scholars
  • adaptation and the post-human world
  • remaking and readapting
  • adaptation and seriality
  • building and maintaining adaptation networks

Participants may register here. This conference is free and open to the public.