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UID:413@harvard-yenching.org
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251015T113000
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URL:https://www.harvard-yenching.org/events/appropriation-or-dialogue-and-
 why-it-matters-the-poetics-and-politics-of-cross-cultural-adaptation/
SUMMARY:Appropriation or Dialogue—and Why It Matters: The Poetics and Pol
 itics of Transcultural Adaptation
DESCRIPTION:Co-sponsored with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\n\nAd
 aptation studies has long occupied an uneasy position between literary\, f
 ilm\, and media studies. Its trajectory has been far from smooth\, moving 
 from early fidelity criticism to later intertextual studies primarily info
 rmed by narratological insights. While earlier scholarship focused on the 
 semiotic or formal dimensions of adaptation\, the field is now experiencin
 g a cultural turn\, with adaptation increasingly situated within media cul
 ture and examined for its cultural implications. Whereas an earlier emphas
 is on transmedia adaptation compelled attention to the semiotic features o
 f different media\, foregrounding topics such as media affordances\, the r
 ecent cultural turn urges us to consider adaptation’s broader cultural r
 amifications—not merely as functions of media culture\, but as part of w
 ider processes of cultural negotiation and transformation. Transcultural a
 daptation\, an underexplored realm within adaptation studies\, offers a un
 ique vantage point from which to understand such negotiation and transform
 ation.\n\nTo illustrate the complexity of the process\, this talk approach
 es transcultural adaptation as a politically charged phenomenon with signi
 ficant narrative consequences. The cultural negotiations involved\, which 
 are never neutral\, may take the form of borrowing\, appropriation\, hybri
 dization\, indigenization\, among others\, each producing distinct narrati
 ve effects. To demonstrate how these strategies operate in practice\, I ex
 amine Disney’s adaptations of The Ballad of Mulan—the 1998 animated fe
 ature and the more recent live-action film—highlighting the ways in whic
 h different cultural strategies leave discernible narrative traces.
CATEGORIES:Visiting Scholar Talks
LOCATION:Common Room (#136)\, 2 Divinity Avenue\, Cambridge\, MA\, United S
 tates
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