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Scholarly approaches to the relationship between literature and film, ranging from the traditional focus upon fidelity to more recent issues of intertextuality, all contain a significant blind spot: a lack of theoretical and methodological attention to adaptation as an historical and transnational phenomenon. This book argues for a historically informed approach to American popular culture that reconfigures the classically defined adaptation phenomenon as a form of transnational reception. Focusing on several case studies- including the films <em>Sense and Sensibility</em> (1995) and <em>The Portrait of a Lady</em> (1997), and the classics <em>The Third Man</em> (1949) and <em>The Bridge on the River Kwai</em> (1957)-the author demonstrates the ways adapted literary works function as social and cultural events in history and how these become important sites of cultural negotiation and struggle.</p>