Scarecrow Press Adaptation Studies and Learning: New Frontiers

In Adaptation Studies and Learning: New Frontiers, Laurence Raw and Tony Gurr seek to redefine the ways in which adaptation is taught and learned. Comprised of essays, reflections, and "learning conversations" about the ways in which this approach to adaptation might be implemented, this book focuses on issues of curriculum construction, the role of technology, and the importance of collaboration. By looking beyond the classroom, the authors consider how adaptation assumes equal importance in the world of the cinema as in the academy, demonstrating how adaptation studies involves real-world issues of prime importance-not only to film and theater professionals, but to all learners. Review "Adaptation studies," as the title suggests, refers to how adaptation informs and educates learners in a larger sense. Such borrowing, as Raw and Gurr explain, exposes people to "a dialogic sphere of influence, appropriation, and citation." The authors further define "adaptation" as a principal educational vehicle for millennial culture involving skills in valuing, communicating, social interaction, and aesthetic engagement. A chapter on 21st-century learning, for example, cites a Jane Austen seminar utilizing blogs. This book functions as a "curriculum generator," inspiring skills in critical thinking, conceptualizing, and analysis. It rejects memory-based curricula and disparages literary study based on "what you knew rather than what you could do with what you knew." Regarding Shakespeare, the authors argue that adaptation becomes less textual and more a vehicle to change behavior and add "flexibility in perspective," resulting in collaboration, feedback, and reflection. Borrowing ideas from cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, they suggest that new transmedial adaptations arise from the selection and transformation of material, and the result is an axiomatic shift that privileges process over content. The authors affirm that "all texts borrow from a wellspring of textual annunciations with no static, explicit point of origin." Summing Up: Recommended. All levels of students and instructors.--CHOICE About the Author Laurence Raw is one of the leading figures in contemporary adaptation studies. His previous books include Adapting Henry James to the Screen (Scarecrow, 2006), The Pedagogy of Adaptation (Scarecrow, 2010), and Translation, Adaptation and Transformation (2012). Tony Gurr is an educational consultant and instructional skills facilitator based in Ankara, Turkey. His blog, “allthingslearning,” is popular with educators, trainers, curriculum and assessment specialists and educational managers.