Adaptation and Perception – Call for Papers

Special Issue of Adaptation: Adaptation and Perception
Guest editors: Sibylle Baumbach, Dan Hassler-Forest, and Pascal Nicklas

Submission deadline: 1 October, 2016

Adaptation is a key concept in the context of media convergence, cross-platform storyworlds, and transmedia storytelling (Ryan and Thon 2014). While more traditional approaches in adaptation studies focused primarily on film adaptations and the relationship between book and film, recent approaches in the field address a broader range of aspects, including recent developments in convergence and participatory culture (Nicklas and Voigts 2013). In this context, the notion of the passive consumer has been replaced by the “produser” or “prosumer” respectively, which point to the intersection of producers and consumers first registered in Henry Jenkins’ definition of convergence culture (Jenkins 2006).

Technological changes have not only facilitated media convergence: they also changed the role activities such as reading, watching, and listening played and continue to play in processes of adaptation. The facility to adapt a text, a film, or a piece of music by means of digital devices, for instance, blurs the line between purely receptive and purely productive modes of interaction and enables new modes of participatory adaptation. Furthermore, the increasingly decentered modes of reception, distribution, and production through social media provide a fertile ground for the dissemination of creative readings and writings (Hassler-Forest and Nicklas 2015).

Within this new media matrix, content seems to flow more easily across multiple channels connecting multiple technological platforms. Replacing the traditional interfaces of page and screen, laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones enable innovative forms of participation and creativity by opening up new avenues for recording and producing media. All of these developments have had a profound impact on our everyday use of technological devices and on our patterns of behaviour and perception. The cardinal role of perception in processes of adaptation, however, remains largely unexplored. This is all the more surprising as the appreciation of an aesthetics of adaptation, which is intimately connected to media convergence, would help reveal the underlying conditions of perception that have shaped and continue to shape adaptations in contemporary convergence culture.

This special issue of Adaptation aims to explore and assess perceptual underpinnings and perceptual changes involved in the reception and/or production of adaptations in media convergence. We welcome papers from a wide range of disciplines, including literary, film, and media studies as well as empirical and neuro-aesthetics. We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches that focus on processes of adaptation and perception. Submissions should be no longer than 5,000 – 6,000 words.

References

  • Adaptation: “Adaptation, Transmedia Storytelling and Participatory Culture.” Guest Editors: Pascal Nicklas and Eckart Voigts. Volume 6 Issue 2, August 2013.
  • Dan Hassler-Forest and Pascal Nicklas: The Politics of Adaptation: Media Convergence and Ideology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
  • Henry Jenkins: Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
  • Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noel Thon: Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology. University of Nebraska Press, 2014.