This collection of forty original essays reflects on the history of adaptation studies, surveys the current state of the field, and maps out possible futures that mobilize its unparalleled ability to bring together theorists and practitioners in different modes of discourse. Grounding contemporary adaptation studies in a series of formative debates about what adaptation is, whether its orientation should be scientific or aesthetic, and whether it is most usefully approached inductively, through close analyses of specific adaptations, or deductively, through general theories of adaptation, the volume, not so much a museum as a laboratory or a provocation, aims to foster, rather than resolve, these debates. Its seven parts focus on the historical and theoretical foundations of adaptation study, the problems raised by adapting canonical classics and the aesthetic commons, the ways different genres and presentational modes illuminate and transform the nature of adaptation, the relations between adaptation and intertextuality, the interdisciplinary status of adaptation, and the issues involved in professing adaptation, now and in the future. Embracing an expansive view of adaptation and adaptation studies, it emphasizes the area’s status as a crossroads or network that fosters interactive exchange across many disciplines and advocates continued debate on its leading questions as the best defense against the possibilities of dilution, miscommunication, and chaos that this expansive view threatens to introduce to a burgeoning field uniquely responsive to the contemporary textual landscape.
THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA: AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S VIEW
