4:08 p.m., Sept. 9, 2008----Thomas Leitch, UD professor of English, will speak on “How I Learned to Stop Judging and Love Adaptation” at noon, Thursday, Sept. 18, in the Class of 1941 Lecture Room of the Morris Library. A part of the “The Scholar in the Library” series, the talk is sponsored by the University of Delaware Library Assembly of Professional Staff.

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The event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served.

Leitch is the author of Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ, which explores the topic of film adaptation in depth. He will examine the widely held view that although everyone has seen movies based on beloved novels, plays and stories, no one likes them.

For many years, the study of film adaptations was equally unfashionable by English departments and film studies programs, with literary scholars believing movies were never as good as the original books, and film theorists believing such discussions were too bookish for a discipline that developed in opposition to literary studies.

Leitch, who initially resisted film adaptations and adaptation study, discusses the groundbreaking work in adaptation studies, and his own experiences in classrooms, conferences, movie theatres and libraries to examine the issues that have given a new impetus to film adaptations and the people who love them.