Adaptation and Aging
A call for papers for the fourth LFA/AAS Online Conference
February 20-22 2025
Apply here
How old are you? How do you feel about getting older? And how will you still be able to carry out your responsibilities as you age? Most people had reservations asking these questions of anyone but their closest friends and family members until the recent Presidential election season in the United States threw them into sharp relief. So the organizers of this year’s online joint conference of the Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies—Julie Grossman, Thomas Leitch, Seda Öz, Allen Redmon, and John Sanders—invite anyone who’s ever thought about the relations between adapting and aging as parallel processes, opposing forces, conjoined twins, or strange bedfellows to share their experiences with audiences from around the world. The conference, scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, 20–22 February 2025, aims to foster more global conversations among adaptation 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. There is no charge to attend the conference, whose language will be English, but all presenters should be current members of the LFA, the AAS, or both of them.
We invite abstracts for ten-minute presentations that deal with any aspect of adaptation. As this year’s conference title suggests, we’re especially interested in the surprising range of issues that the inescapable process of aging poses for adaptation. But we’re not about to exclude adaptation scholars with other matters on their minds. So presentations for the conference may focus on any aspect of the relation between aging and particular adaptations or adaptation as a more general practice. We particularly encourage submissions on the following topics:
• the adaptation age
• adaptation as a response to aging bodies, minds, industries, or technologies
• adaptation as a way of rejuvenating old texts
• the role of adaptations in maintaining or updating canons
• adaptation and nostalgia for the past
• adapting with an eye on future ages
• how stage and screen adaptations portray characters who noticeably age
• how stage and screen adaptations portray characters who are too young or too old to be age-appropriately cast
• adaptations aimed at specific age groups (e.g. Shakespeare for children)
• what happens to adaptations (and audiences’ experiences of them) as both age
• adaptation and agelessness
• relations between biological, textual, and cultural aging
Please submit your abstracts and biographical information via this form by 1 December 2024. Any and all inquiries should be directed to adaptationage2025@gmail.com. We will notify everyone whose proposals are accepted for presentation by mid-December.