Graphic Adaptations of World Literature in the Digital Pop Age (CFP)
Event: CFP
Dear colleagues,
Please see the call for contributions for Graphic Adaptations of World Literature in the Digital Pop Age
Note: This CFP is the beginning stage of a sabbatical application and project. I aim to assemble a strong Table of Contents for a collected volume in order to pitch to publishers. At my institution, we apply for sabbatical two years in advance (see the full proposed timeline for the current volume below). If that extended timeframe fits your plans, please send a proposal my way (kutch@kutztown.edu) by July 31, 2026.
Call for Contributions
Graphic Adaptations of World Literature in the Digital Pop Age
Admittedly, I initially resisted an idea a student of mine advanced during a recent discussion: “I don’t think, in our modern world, there is pop culture that is not digital.” I soon realized, however, that the claim becomes increasingly persuasive through a deliberate investigation of the digital underpinnings that emerge in literary adaptations. In this sense, immersive audiovisual film likely springs to mind first as the medium that most readily reveals pop culture’s inextricable entanglement with the digital. Yet comics and graphic novel adaptations of world literature arguably manifest this interconnectedness even more forcefully because readers can linger over images at a slower pace than film’s 24 frames per second. To take one example, the grotesque, distorted body-horrific style of Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein: A Graphic Novel (2013) invites interpretation through the lens of contemporary pop/digital culture’s fascination with bodily transformation, cosmetic intervention, plastic surgery culture, and viral before-and-after influencer aesthetics.
Such readings reveal how graphic and visual adaptations of world literature across diverse cultural traditions acquire new interpretive possibilities through the frameworks of contemporary digital and popular culture. Not limited to but also not excluding Western literary and media contexts, this edited volume invites contributions that examine graphic adaptations of world literature by placing them into dialogue with aspects of contemporary popular and digital culture. Contributors are encouraged to explore how adaptations resonate with phenomena such as platform culture, virality, serialization, content creation, or influencer culture, thus reframing how graphic adaptations participate in ongoing processes of pop remediation. Research questions or approaches include, but are not limited to:
pop and digital culture as interpretive lenses that enable new readings of adaptation across transnational and multilingual media environments
forms of convergence between traditional narrative systems (oral storytelling, classical literature, pre-modern epics) and contemporary visual storytelling shaped by digital circulation and social media
graphic adaptations as participants in visual culture shaped by memes, virality, and algorithm
reception contexts (digital, transnational, platform-mediated) and their reshaping of original literary tradition
updates in adaptation theory as it pertains to digital culture and how contemporary media and the digipop cultural landscape influence our understanding of adaptation
global visual cultures of transformation: beauty standards, cosmetic modification, gender transition narratives, etc
the aptitude of digital formats to update and reinterpret world literature
Pedagogical approaches that connect world literature adaptations to contemporary media environments
Tentative Timeline (note years)
July 31, 2026: deadline for 300 word proposals to kutch@kutztown.edu
August 31, 2026: notice of acceptance
December 31, 2027: turn in first manuscripts
Spring 2028: editing phase one
Academic Year 2028-2029: final edits and publication in spring 2029
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c0Pf0_opxoT0gK3B-H_VFlKfG-NKmtvob41FLRw_Tc0/edit?tab=t.0
Lynn Marie Kutch