Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
Intellectual spaces in screenwriting studies: The practitioner-academic and fidelity discourse
Author: Terry Bailey
As Craig Batty argues, traditional screenwriting research predominantly concerns itself not with the practice of writing, but its end product. This can lead to the actual process of writing being overlooked. The advent of the practitioner-academic within screenwriting studies has led to the foregrounding of the interests of practice over those of more traditional academic research. According to Batty, the intent of the practitioner-academic’s research is to generate knowledge that can influence the work of screenwriters directly. This article argues that additionally, practitioner-academics can make a valuable contribution towards more ‘traditional’ research, simply by occupying the same unique intellectual space from which they might influence practice. The article uses debates surrounding fidelity within adaptation studies to examine the ways in which the practitioner-academic’s unique approach can enhance ‘traditional’ research, and draws on examples from practice to do so, namely the book to film adaptation Starship Troopers (1997).
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
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