recontextualize

verb

re·​con·​tex·​tu·​al·​ize ˌrē-kən-ˈteks-chə-wə-ˌlīz 

-chə-ˌlīz

recontextualized; recontextualizing; recontextualizes

transitive verb

: to place (something, such as a literary or artistic work) in a different context

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Chang is part of a team of Stanford scholars who launched the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project in 2012 to recover and recontextualize their stories. —Ellen Mcgirt, Fortune, 2 May 2023

Unlike the first game’s linear story, the second follows a more novelistic approach with sprawling multi-act narratives told from multiple overlapping perspectives and some major rug-pull moments that consistently recontextualize things the player has already experienced. —Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 15 Mar. 2023

To recontextualize and reimagine these historical sites, Mellon will fund projects like artist Dustin Klein’s recent light installations, which projected images of historical figures including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman onto a controversial statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia. —Nora Mcgreevy, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Oct. 2020

Beer’s work tracks a Westerner’s aesthetic journey into an ancient spiritual culture that Sherpa works joyfully to recontextualize in the present day. —Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Feb. 2023

Solo exhibition showcases collages and ceramic works that recontextualize historical images and motifs to memorialize Black figures in United States history. —Luann Gibbs, The Enquirer, 12 Feb. 2023

And the web—particularly social media—provides countless opportunities for intertextuality, chances to recontextualize, retweet, repost, riposte. —WIRED, 3 Feb. 2023

The series’ compassionate approach to the classic murder-mystery move — taking a beat to revisit and recontextualize a previously peripheral character — bestows a distinctive generosity upon the array of individuals who inhabit this world. —Vulture, 30 Aug. 2022

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Word History

First Known Use

1954, in the meaning defined above