[Commlist] CFP "A Rose by Any Other Name: Approaches to Audiovisual Adaptations"

*Comparative Cinema No. 28 – Summer 2027***

**

*A Rose by Any Other Name: Approaches to Audiovisual Adaptations***

In Act II of William Shakespeare’s /Romeo and Juliet/, Juliet—tormented 
by the family feud separating her from her lover—ponders the meaning 
behind a name and declares: “A rose by any other name would smell as 
sweet.” This phrase, now an adage, points to the essence’s capacity to 
transcend naming—to transcend form. As a process of transposing one 
register to another, audiovisual adaptation has long been valued based 
on its “fidelity” to the source material—its ability, by other name, to 
retain the defining qualities of the work being adapted. Although 
scholars in the field of adaptation studies quickly moved past the issue 
of fidelity—deeming it prescriptive, elitist, and reductive—the question 
of a work’s “essence” remains central to many critical assessments.

Despite being frequent targets of criticism, adaptations have been part 
of cinema history since the medium’s very inception. While François 
Truffaut criticized them as symptomatic of the ills plaguing the French 
cinema that preceded his own era, and Virginia Woolf condemned them as a 
“predatory” form, André Bazin took a different view: placing cinema and 
literature side by side not only allowed for the identification of each 
medium’s unique characteristics but also fostered a bond that could 
drive the maturation of audiovisual art—much as Sergei Eisenstein viewed 
cinema as the successor to the nineteenth-century novel.

After decades of development, adaptation studies has shifted away from 
the concept of fidelity to explore adaptation as “a work of 
re-accentuation, in which a source is reinterpreted through new networks 
and discourses” (Stam 2005, 1). This evolution has led to the 
development of taxonomies for approaching the /urtext/, as well as 
narratological and intertextuality-focused approaches. “One way to look 
at adaptation is to see it as a matter of a source-novel hypotext's 
being transformed by a complex series of operations: selection, 
amplification, concretization, updating, critique, extrapolation, 
analogization, popularization, and reculturalization” (Stam 2000, 68).

This new issue of /Comparative Cinema/ invites authors to examine 
contemporary audiovisual adaptations and engage with the central 
concerns that have shaped adaptation studies. The issue is also open to 
exploring adaptations across different audiovisual registers (for 
example: Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley as seen in the films /Plein Soleil/ 
[René Clément, 1960], /Der amerikanische Freund /[Wim Wenders, 1977], 
and /The Talented Mr. Ripley/ [Anthony Minghella, 1999], through to the 
miniseries /Ripley/ [Steve Zaillian, 2024]); the intersections between 
literary and cinematic authorship (for example: Emily Brontë’s Gothic 
Romanticism and the haptic visuality of Andrea Arnold’s /Wuthering 
Heights/ [2011]); ...the dynamics of narrative expansion and compression 
between literature and audiovisual media (for example: Gabriel García 
Márquez’s /One Hundred Years of Solitude/ and its recent Netflix 
adaptation [2024–2026]); and graphic novel adaptations and the 
specificities of their modes of representation within adaptation studies 
(for example: Daniel Clowes’s /Ghost World/ and Terry Zwigoff’s film 
version [2001]), among other topics.

*_Important dates:_**__*

Submission of full texts: January 30, 2027

Notification of acceptance or rejection: February 13, 2027

Peer review: February–March 2027

Submission of final revisions: March–April 2027

Publication of the issue: Summer 2027

Contact: (comparativecinema /at/ upf.edu) <mailto:(comparativecinema /at/ upf.edu)>

https://raco.cat/index.php/Comparativecinema 
<https://raco.cat/index.php/Comparativecinema>

*_Recommended bibliography_*

Albrecht-Crane, Christa and Dennis Cutchins, editors. 2010. /Adaptation 
Studies. /Rosemond.

Bortolotti, Gary R., and Linda Hutcheon. 2007. “On the Origin of 
Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and ‘Success’: Biologically.” 
/New Literary History /38 (3): 443–58. 
https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2007.0038 
<https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2007.0038>

Boozer, Jack. 2008. /Authorship in film adaptation. /University of Texas 
Press.

Cartmell, Deborah, and Imelda Whelehan, editors. 2010. /Screen 
Adaptation: Impure Cinema. /Palgrave Macmillan.

Cartmell, Deborah, editor. 2012. /A Companion to Literature, Film, and 
Adaptation./ Wiley- Blackwell.

Cutchins, Dennis, Katja Krebs, and Eckart Voigts, editors. 2018. /The 
Routledge Companion to adaptation. /Routledge.

Demory, Pamela, editor. 2013. /Queer/Adaptation. //A collection of 
critical essays. /Palgrave Macmillan.

Elliott, Kamilla. 2020. /Theorizing Adaptation. /Oxford University Press.

Hutcheon, Linda. 2012. /A Theory of Adaptation. /Routledge.

Leitch, Thomas. 2008. “Adaptation Studies at a Crossroads.” 
/Adaptation///1 (1): 63-77.https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apm005 
<https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apm005>

Leitch, Thomas, editor. 2017. /The Oxford handbook of adaptation 
studies. /Oxford University Press.

Naremore, James, editor.2000./Film Adaptation//. /RutgersUniversity 
Press.*__*

Stam, Robert, and Alessandra Raengo, editor. 2005. /Literature and Film: 
A Guide to the///

/Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation/.John Wiley & Sons.


/Comparative Cinema /(ISSN 2604-9821)//is an open-access publication by 
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) that analyzes film from a 
comparative perspective. The journal follows a double blind peer review 
process and does not charge any submission or processing fees to its 
authors.

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