Interpretive remembrance: articulating a sensitizing concept of the adaptation experience

Abstract

Adaptations saturate contemporary culture, from blockbuster films and bestselling video games to streaming series and novelizations. While adaptation studies has long debated questions of definition, fidelity, and medium specificity, less attention has been paid to the lived experience of audiences who encounter texts as adaptations. This dissertation develops interpretive remembrance as a sensitizing concept to theorize the adaptation experience through the lens of memory. Interpretive remembrance describes the oscillation between past and present texts, the cognitive and cultural processes of recognition and recall, and the affective dissonance that arises when remembered texts collide with new encounters. By foregrounding memory as both neurocognitive and socially mediated, the project reframes adaptation not as a static product or creative process but as an experiential phenomenon. The dissertation surveys multiple domains to articulate interpretive remembrance. Cognitive science provides insight into situational models, nodal networks, and global judgments as mechanisms of individual memory. Cultural and collective memory studies demonstrate how communities stabilize and circulate interpretive frameworks through discourse, fandom, and prosumer practices. Case studies of cross‑media adaptations—including film, games, and literary texts—illustrate how interpretive remembrance operates across contexts, shaping audience reception and interpretive norms. Building on Kamilla Elliott’s call to “theorize adaptively,” the project resists rigid definitions and instead embraces hybrid theorization, situating adaptation within both structuralist and poststructuralist traditions while moving toward contiguous models of analysis. By making memory’s role in adaptation reception analytically legible, interpretive remembrance contributes a methodological tool for adaptation scholars and a pedagogical resource for media studies classrooms. It clarifies how audiences negotiate fidelity, difference, and context through memory, and how these negotiations reflect broader cultural values and identities. In theorizing interpretive remembrance, this dissertation advances adaptation studies by shifting focus from defining what adaptations are to understanding how they are experienced, thereby opening new avenues for analyzing the dynamic interplay of texts, audiences, and cultural environments.