This collection of essays asks the question "What is history?" and considers how history is shaped in different socioeconomic contexts. The writers take a transdisciplinary approach, in the belief that everyone who deals with history—including professional historians, novelists, and poets—constructs narratives of the past to make sense of the present as well as to determine their future courses of action. With contributions from a variety of specialists in media studies, literature, history and anthropology, this book breaks new ground in adaptation studies.