Module Description: 

Since the emergence of film as a distinct artistic medium, literary texts have served as a source of inspiration for filmmakers throughout the world such that adaptation itself represents a unique point of cross-cultural comparison. Nonetheless, adaptation is a deceptively simple term which names both a cultural product and a complex and multifaceted process. As an act of intermedial translation, adaptation invariably involves a degree of elision and loss, yet it is a fundamentally creative act which transforms a written text into a visual and sonic experience. In this advanced module, students will explore such issues by examining literary adaptations produced throughout the Americas. By comparing film and television adaptations produced in the Latin American (including Brazil) and North American contexts, and adaptations which cross regional cultural divides, students will learn about the specific histories, cultures, and socio-economic realities which underpin various literary and cinematic texts and genres in the Americas, while simultaneously reflecting on the legacies of colonialism, contemporary transcultural power dynamics, and the relations between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ culture. Moreover, students will critically reflect on adaptation as process in order to better understand what it is that literature and cinema do as unique sign systems.  

 

Aims and Learning Outcomes: 

The module aims to: 


	introduce students to adaptation theory and, through critical engagement with this discourse, enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of literary and cinematic texts produced throughout the Americas; 
	
	
	explore how and why filmmakers across the American continent resort to literary adaptation in order to examine their specific socio-historical and cultural realities; 
	

	equip students with a critical vocabulary and hermeneutic approach (incorporating such related themes and concepts as intertextuality, intermediality, genre studies, cross-cultural translation, the transnational etc), through which they can discuss adaptation in a sophisticated manner; 
	
	
	cultivate skills and aptitudes of close (con)textual analysis; 
	
	
	enhance students’ understanding of a range of historical and cultural phenomena as examined in different literary texts and cinematic adaptations produced in the 20th and 21st centuries in the Americas; 
	
	
	improve students independent research skills. 
	
 

 

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to: 

 


	demonstrate knowledge of adaptation theory and a critical awareness of the scholarly debates regarding film adaptation; 
	
	
	critically examine a range of cinematic adaptations, situating them within their cultural and historical contexts and analysing the relationship between literary and filmic text; 
	

	demonstrate understanding of the diverse histories, cultures, and socio-economic realities of the Americas as depicted in the literary texts and films studied; 
	
	
	present their ideas in cogent, well-structured film-essays.  
	
 

Suggested Reading: 

 

Indicative set texts and adaptations: 

 

Graciliano Ramos, Vidas secas/Barren Lives, Brazil, (1938) 

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Vidas secas/Barren Lives, Brazil, (1963) [FILM] 

 

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, USA, (1939) 

John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, USA, (1940) [FILM] 

 

Jorge Amado, Dona Flor e seus dois maridos/Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Brazil, (1966) 

Bruno Barreto, Dona Flor e seus dois maridos/Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Brazil, (1976) [FILM] 

Robert Mulligan, Kiss Me Goodbye, USA, (1982) [FILM] 

Dias Gomes, Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos, Brazil, Rede Globo, (31 March–1 May 1998) [TV SERIES] 

Eduardo Meza, Doña Flor y sus dos maridos, Mexico, Televisa, (25 March 2019–21 June 2019) [TV SERIES] 

 

Lucía Puenzo, Argentina, Wakolda (2011) 

Lucía Puenzo, Argentina, Wakolda/The German Doctor (2013) [FILM] 

 

Edmundo Desnoes, Cuba, Memorias del subdesarrollo (1965) 

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968) [FILM] 

 

Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, USA, (1998) 

Spike Jonze, Adaptation, USA, (2002) [FILM] 

 

Antonio di Benedetto, Zama, Argentina, (1956) 

Lucrecia Martel, Zama, Argentina, (2017) [FILM] 

 

Ricardo Piglia, Plata quemada, Argentina, (1997) 

Marcelo Piñeyro, Plata quemada, Argentina, (2000) [FILM] 

 

Hans Christian Anderson, ‘The Little Match Girl’, Denmark, (1845) 

Víctor Gaviria, La vendedora de rosas, Colombia, (1998) [FILM] 

 

Mario Vargas Llosa, Pantaleón y las visitadoras, Peru, (1973) 

Mario Vargas Llosa and José María Gutiérrez Santos, Pantaleón y las visitadoras, Peru, (1975) [FILM] 

Francisco José Lombardi, Pantaleón y las visitadoras, Peru, (2000) [FILM] 

 

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Russia/USA, (1955) 

Stanley Kubrick, Lolita, UK/USA, (1962) [FILM] 

Adrian Lyne, Lolita, France/USA, (1998) [FILM] 

 

 

Select theoretical reading list: 

 

Bethell. Leslie (Ed.), A Cultural History of Latin America: Literature, Music and the Visual Arts in the 19th and 20th Centuries, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 

Corrigan, Timothy (Ed.), Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader, (London and New York: Routledge, 2012) 

Dann Luna, Ilana, Adapting Gender: Mexican Feminisms from Literature to Film (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018) 

Della Coletta, When Stories Travel: Cross-Cultural Encounters between Fiction and Film, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2012) 

Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Adaptation, (New York: Routledge, 2006) 

Raengo, Alessandra and Robert Stam (Eds.), Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) 

Raengo, Alessandra and Robert Stam (Eds.), A Companion to Literature and Film, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) 

 

 

PLEASE NOTE, DETAILED READING LISTS WILL BE PROVIDED FOR EACH SPECIFIC TEXT DISCUSSED 

 

 