29 – Mapping Itineraries of Adaptations

Adaptation Studies has long moved away from the fetish of the original, preferring to think instead of the lives and afterlives of adaptations as itineraries that are shaped by, and in turn shape their political, cultural, artistic contexts (B. Venkat Mani 2007, 2016; Aamir Mufti 2016; Francesca Orsini 2023). This panel invites papers that investigate the lives and afterlives of adaptations in and from South Asia conjecturally, investing in a close reading and analysis of both text and context. The panel is interested in questions like— a) What are the political and aesthetic choices that go into the creating adaptations? b) What is chosen and what gets left behind? How does this further add (or take away) from aesthetic pleasures? c) Why are some source texts more popular than others at a particular point in time? d) How can we think about and through contexts when we think about adaptations, their lives, and their afterlives? e) What is the impact of the politics of canon-formation on deciding what gets adapted? f) What are the sites of adaptation? g) What are the ethics of adaptation? How do they impact production as well as circulation/reception/legacy? Paper submissions are encouraged from across different time period, locales and milieux as long as they are either situated in South Asia, are from South Asian literary cultures or circulate in South Asian diaspora. It could be particularly productive to think through papers that engage with vastly differing material histories of the pre-modern and modern, colonial and postcolonial, nation and diaspora etc. Ideally, the panel will be a staging ground into more programmatic forays into thinking about adaptations in World Literature, with South Asian Literatures and Cultures as the point of entry.

Convenor

Sharma Chinmay -