Deadline: 06/30/2026
Contact: Michael Fuchs
Email: michael.fuchs@uibk.ac.at

We invite proposals for a small number of additional chapters for an edited volume on animal adaptations, edited by Justyna Włodarczyk (University of Warsaw) and Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck).

The volume grows out of the NCN-funded project “Animal Adaptations” (https://www.animaladaptations.wn.uw.edu.pl/) and examines how representations of nonhuman animals change as stories, figures, and imaginaries move across media. Chapters are intended to pay particular attention to how medium-specific affordances—such as visuality, sound, movement, interactivity, and performance—reshape animal subjectivity, embodiment, and perception, as well as to the ethical implications of these transformations for human–animal relations and the treatment of real animals within media cultures.

While our current lineup includes a strong core of literature–film adaptations, we are seeking a small number of additional contributions that extend the volume’s transmedial scope. We especially welcome proposals that engage with:

animal figures traveling across media—from historical accounts to literary texts and their cultural afterlives (as in the Mocha Dick / Moby-Dick constellation) and the movement of iconic animals such as Secretariat across media to contemporary viral animals moving from social media into broadcast/pop-cultural attention (Taiji dolphins, axolotls, Moo Deng, etc.)
cross-media adaptations beyond literature-to-film, such as comic–film, film–videogame, literature–game, game–film, theatre/performance, animation, museum and exhibition contexts, social media, and other intermedial or platform-based constellations

We are open to a wide range of case studies, including both canonical and popular media, and to approaches grounded in animal studies, adaptation studies, transmedia studies, environmental humanities, and related fields.

If you have an idea that might fit the volume and would like to contribute, please send us a short abstract of 250-300 words as soon as possible to j.wlodarczyk@uw.edu.pl and michael.fuchs@uibk.ac.at. Full draft chapters of approx. 7,000–8,000 words will be due in early 2027.

We will submit the proposal to an international publisher. The volume will be published open access.

Posted on April 27, 2026