The Adaptation of History

This collection of essays asks the question “What is history?” and considers how history is shaped in different socioeconomic contexts. The writers take a transdisciplinary approach, in the belief that everyone who deals with history—including professional historians, novelists, and poets—constructs narratives of the past to make sense of the present as well as to determine their future courses of action. With contributions from a variety of specialists in media studies, literature, history and anthropology, this book breaks new ground in adaptation studies.

Laurence Raw has published extensively in the field of film adaptations and performance. He teaches in the Department of English at Baskent University in Ankara, Turkey.
Defne Ersin Tutan teaches in the Department of American Culture and Literature at Baskent University in Ankara, Turkey.

Edited by Laurence Raw and Defne Ersin Tutan
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 244
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7254-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0058-1
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii

Foreword: Adapting Cinema + History (= Cinematic History?)

(JAMES M. WELSH)      1

Introduction: What Does “Adapting” History Involve?

(DEFNE ERSIN TUTAN AND LAURENCE RAW)      7

PART ONE: MAINSTREAM HISTORY

“Glorifying the American Girl”: Adapting an Icon

(CYNTHIA J. MILLER)      25

Adapting Dachau: Intertexuality and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island

(WALTER C. METZ)      42

The GDR Founding Myth: Adapted History in Children’s and Young Adults’ Fiction of Post- War Germany and the GDR

(ANNE KLAUS)      55

Kneehigh Theatre’s Brief Encounter: “Live on Stage—Not the Film”

(CLAUDIA GEORGI)      66

The Worst of Youth: Mario Martone’s Noi Credevamo as a Contested Historical Adaptation

(MARCO GROSOLI)      79

Cinematic Reinventions of the 1825 Decembrist Uprising in Post- Revolutionary Soviet Russia

(DUNJA DOGO)      87

“The Physicists Have Known Sin”: Hollywood’s Depictions of the Manhattan Project, 1945–1995

(A. BOWDOIN VAN RIPER)      97

Adapting History and the History of Adaptation

(CLARE FOSTER)      117

The Crisis of Adapting History in Zimbabwe

(SABELO J. NDLOVU- GATSHENI)      129

Adapting Archaeological Landscapes: Re- Presenting Ireland’s Heritage

(MANJREE KHAJANCHI)      141

PART TWO: ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

Palimpsests of History in Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture

(GÜLDEN HATIPOG˘LU)      153

Interpreting the Vietnam War from a Vietnamese American Perspective

(YUKI OBAYASHI)      161

Re- Inscribing Sovereignty: History, Adaptation, and Medicine in the Poetry of Deborah Miranda

(ROSE GUBELE)      171

Recuperating, Re- Membering and Resurrecting the Old South: Historical Adaptation in Caroline Gordon’s Penhally and None Shall Look Back

(TANFER EMIN TUNÇ)      181

Looking Beyond the Moving Moments: Adaptation, Digitization and Amateur Film Footage as Visual Histories

(HEATHER NORRIS NICHOLSON)      196

Recasting the Past in the Personal Present: History, Film, and Adaptation

(GERALD DUCHOVNAY, ERIC GRUVER, CHARLES

HAMILTON and HAYLEY HASIK)      207

About the Contributors      223

Index      227

“excellent”—Destructive Music.