IASPR Announcements

Sarah S. G. Frantz

An email that just went out to the IASPR membership:

I am writing today to tell you about all those exciting things that we're doing for, with, and to IASPR:

• The IASPR website.
• The IASPR members' forum.
• The IASPR Cafe Press store.
• The RWA conference next week, Washington DC.
• The IASPR conference in Brisbane, Australia next month.
• The Call For Proposals for 2010 IASPR conference in Belgium.
• Future conference plans and Call for Conference Organizers for 2011 and 2012.
• The Call for Submissions for the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.
• Do you know scholars who do popular romance studies? Let me know!

It's a lot to cover, but I hope you'll stick with me! I figured one long email was better than flooding your Inbox with every new announcement.

1. First of all, our beautiful logo and website are up and running. This the portal for most of the rest of the stuff I'll be talking about. Dennis Crothers designed our amazing logo and he and Rob Landrigan designed and built the website. We're very proud of its clean look and (hopefully) the ease of navigation.

Please click through the About tab for our History and the list of our Officers and current (growing) Board of Directors. Check our Conferences tab for news and registration for upcoming conferences. Check back regularly for IASPR updates on the front page. And please direct your friends and colleagues there for information about IASPR.

2. The interactive (and, to me, the most exciting) part of the website is the Members' Forum: a standing messageboard where IASPR members (and non-members) can interact, sharing news of and discussions about popular romance studies. Anyone can register as a member of the board and navigate through "Chatter," "Books," "Articles," "Suggested Reading," and other Topics. Members of IASPR, once they register and are approved by the Board moderator, will have access to a members only section of the forum, in which we discuss Professionalization, Job Opportunities, Publishing Venues, and in which we will create writing critique groups and beta-reading groups for academic writing. Please join us there as soon as you can so we'll have a vibrant, active community of IASPR members!

3. IASPR has a Cafe Press store where you can buy shirts, mugs, and pins with our logo as well as fun slogans like "Romance Readers Make Better Scholars," "Romance: Think About It," "In UR bodice, analyzin UR literachur," and many more. If you have any ideas for more slogans, just email me to let me know and I'll see what I can do to add it to the options. Every purchase supports IASPR, so feel free to splurge! Or tell your friends and family about the Store, so that they can spoil you.

4. A few IASPR Officers and members will be at the annual conference of the Romance Writers of America in Washington D.C. next week at various events:

• Our President Sarah Frantz, our Vice-President Pamela Regis, and NYT best-selling author Sabrina Jeffries will be presenting "If you like the Classics; Or, How to recommend romance to Literature Snobs in your library" at the Librarians' Day on June 15, 2009.
• Sarah, Pam, and IASPR member, Jessica Lyn Van Slooten, will be presenting on "The Wit, Wisdom, and Writing Advice of Jennifer Crusie" on Friday, July 17, 3:15-4:15pm, in Washington 3. IASPR Board Member Jenny Crusie herself will be responding to the panel! We'd love to see IASPR members there.
• After this panel, IASPR will have a get-together from 4:30-6:30 in a room to be announced. Watch the IASPR Twitter page for announcement.
• IASPR will have a table at the Moonlight Madness Bazaar on Thursday, July 16, 8-midnight. We'll be talking about IASPR to anyone interested. We'll also be handing out IASPR swag to members: a tote bag, a membership pin, pens, a lanyard, bookmarks, etc. So come and get come cool IASPR stuff and meet your Officers.
• Sarah, our Secretary Melissa Golden, and a few other IASPR officers will be wandering around the conference, trying to sign up members and handing out membership swag. Catch one of us and introduce yourself (and get your stuff)!

5. Our first IASPR conference will take place next month in Brisbane, Australia, 13-14 August, 2009. Our exciting, truly international schedule is up on the website. And registration is open. Registration is AU$120 for IASPR members and AU$150 for non-members (who will then be members). The registration page will collect the money in Australian Dollars through PayPal, whether or not you have a PayPal account and whether or not you live in Australia. All you need is a credit card. If you're in the area, we'd love to see you there!

The conference has been generously sponsored by Samhain Publishing, the Romance Writers of America, DePaul University, the University of Queensland, Queensland Institute of Technology, and the Fryer Library. Eminent Australian scholars of popular romance fiction, Juliet Flesch and Lisa Fletcher, will be presenting, as will 22 other amazing scholars.

6. The IASPR conference next year will be in Belgium, 5-7 August, 2010, on the theme of "Theorizing Romance." Lynne Pearce of the University of Lancaster has already agreed to be a keynote speaker. The Call for Proposals is up at the IASPR website. I've had a lot of feedback from people who are excited about having a popular romance studies conference in Europe and I'm thrilled that I'm going to be able to meet so many of you. We'd love to have you there as a presenter, so please consider submitting a proposal. Of course, you all are welcome as audience members, too. Many more details will go up on the website in the New Year about registration, etc.

7. We plan to have our 2011 conference in New York City, NY on the theme of "The Business of Romance," and our 2012 conference in Los Angeles, CA, on the theme of "The Music and Movies of Romance." I'm excited about these conferences as a chance to bring together the disparate aspects of popular romance studies--remember that popular romance studies are not just the study of literature, but of all aspects of the popular representation of romance.

If you are interested in being involved in the planning and organization of either of these conferences, please email me. I would love for a member to step up for these conferences, as they have done already for Brisbane and Belgium. This is your chance to be deeply involved IASPR. Just let me know!

8. The Journal of Popular Romance Studies has posted its Call for Submissions. Our first volume will be released on February 14, 2010, and the deadline for submission for the first volume is October 1, 2009. But if you do not make that cut-off, please still submit to the journal. We're planning on having at least two issues a year, so the second issue will be released in August, 2010.

If you're interested in writing book reviews of volumes of popular romance studies, please email our Book Review Editor. Or if you're interested in having your volume reviewed, please email her too.

9. Finally, do you know anyone else working on popular romance studies? Don't forget other fields: anthropology, sociology, art, film, business, marketing, computer science, philosophy, psychology, etc., even neurobiology? I'd love to hear about them or have them hear about IASPR. If you feel comfortable with it, send me their email address so I can invite them into IASPR. Or send them the web address of IASPR so that they can discover who we are and what it is that we do.

For example, I just connected with the Society for Philosophy of Sex and Love and made some great popular romance studies connections there. Are there scholars or other academic societies who might be excited by what we're doing here at IASPR? Let me know about them and let them know about us!

And let us know about YOUR publications and successes in the field of popular romance studies! We'll add them to our (proposed) annual bibliography of popular romance studies.

As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or, most importantly, suggestions, please let me know! I'd love to hear from any of our members about anything. I look forward to meeting most of you over the next few years of my tenure as your President.

Sincerely,
-Sarah S. G. Frantz, Ph.D., President
The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance

Announcing More Media Attention for Romance Scholars

Laura Vivanco

Thanks to the Smart Bitches, I've just come across an article in USA Today which mentions the Princeton conference and quotes two Teach Me Tonight contributors:

In April, Princeton University [...] hosted a scholarly conference titled "Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture." The event brought together romance writers such as James/Bly and Jennifer Crusie, academics including Pamela Regis and Stephanie Coontz, and Smart Bitch blogger Wendell.

"When I saw the invitation to speak at Princeton, I said, 'Holy crap, we have arrived,' " says Regis, 56, an English professor at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., and author of the seminal text, A Natural History of the Romance Novel.

The conference organizer was DePaul University English professor Eric Selinger, 45. An expert in contemporary American poetry, Selinger's career turned upside down in the late 1990s after he borrowed his wife's copy of Bridget Jones's Diary, the chick-lit classic by Helen Fielding.

"I read it and I loved it," Selinger says. For fun, he started reading the novels on a list compiled by his local library called "If you liked Bridget Jones's Diary, try these ..."

He was amazed. Here he was, an English professor with a Ph.D. from UCLA who had been teaching books for decades and reading even longer. "Yet it never entered my mind to read a romance novel," he says.

Today, in addition to his poetry classes, Selinger teaches courses on the romance genre.

Is it awkward to be a man doing so?

Oh no, Selinger says. His gender makes his life much easier. "Nobody thinks I'm a spinster or trapped in a bad marriage, or I'm betraying feminism," he says. "People don't judge me as much."

The article, by Deirdre Donahue, is available online. It's titled "Scholarly writers empower the romance genre" and focuses on Eloisa James and Julia Quinn. The Smart Bitches have a link to a photo of the article as it appears in a paper copy of USA Today.

The rabbit was originally drawn by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland, has been modified by GeeAlice, and came from Wikimedia Commons.

Here be Dragons! And Fairytales and Romance Writers

Laura Vivanco

Sandra's still fighting with dragons, almost literally so, since they're the topic of her dissertation, so to encourage her I thought I'd link to an online short story about a dragon. It's not a romantic story, but in "The Last Dragon" by Janet Gover the heroine is also struggling with a manuscript, albeit as an illustrator rather than as an academic, so it seemed appropriate:

There was a manuscript in that folder lying on a chair. An epic tale of heroism.... of knights and dragons and beautiful princesses. It was a story to delight any small child. Clare had one more week to illustrate the tale, or the author and publisher would turn elsewhere. She wouldn’t blame them. The few sketches she’d tried in the past few weeks had been lifeless and dull. Like the endless days she was now living.

She desperately hoped things would be different in this place. Wales was full of dragons. She would find inspiration. Her muse would return. Starting tomorrow!

Since that one's not a romance, I thought I'd better include some that are. Here's another short story by Janet Gover, this time based on a fairytale and titled "Fairy Godmothers Need Not Apply." Fairytales seem to have inspired quite a few romance authors (you can browse SurLaLune's list of just a small selection of some fairytale inspired romances, if you're interested).

To finish off, I'll link to one last short story by Janet Gover. This one is a metaromance, and I haven't mentioned one of those at TMT for quite a while. It's called "The Romance Writer." The metaromance includes excerpts from a novel being written by the eponymous romance writer, and the romance reader in the story describes what she reads as "very good; easily as good as anything on her bookshelves." It's always struck me as a bit risky for a writer to include texts supposedly written by her/his characters and which are accepted, within the work of fiction, as being of high quality. What happens if the real reader assesses them differently? Does that change the whole impact of the piece? And how does it affect the real reader's impression of the real author's own writing?


The Welsh dragon is from Wikipedia.

Summertime and the Reading is Free

Laura Vivanco

Since this is their 60th Anniversary, Harlequin have been giving away free ebooks. When I first saw this offer, there were sixteen books available, in a variety of formats. A seventeenth book (a medical romance) has now been added to the collection of free books and all of them are available for download from eharlequin.com/60thanniversary. I'm not sure how long these books will continue to be available for free. I'd assume it would be till at least the end of the anniversary year.


Avon's also been offering free books via its "Love Gives Back" page, but the books have to be read online and are only available for a month before they're replaced by the next month's offerings. To find the free reads, scroll down to the foot of the page.


Samhain's authors are giving away free short stories in pdf format via the Samhellion Free eBook Library. This seems to be a permanent library.

Brisbane Conference: Registration Now Open

Laura Vivanco

As is apparent from the news in my last post, there's a lot going on at IASPR. But before we get to 2010, there's the conference planned for Brisbane (13-14 August):

Generously sponsored by the Romance Writers of America, Samhain Publishing, Depaul University, the University of Queensland, and Queensland University of Technology, the First Annual Conference on Popular Romance studies brings together scholars from all over the world, discussing many different aspects of popular romance.

Eminent Australian scholars Juliet Flesch and Lisa Fletcher headline the event. Presenters come from all corners of the globe, including the US, South Korea, Indonesia, India, New Zealand, Italy, and of course, Australia, filling six panels discussing everything from popular romance novels, Japanese manga, and a biography of Princess Diana, to Georgette Heyer, Bollywood movies, and Twilight.

The schedule of papers and events is now available, and the registration page is at IASPR's website.

IASPR and JPRS: Calls for Proposals and Submissions

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance's website is now almost complete (there are some sections still under construction) and two important items which are now available concern the Journal of Popular Romance Studies and the 2010 IASPR conference:

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) is a peer-reviewed on-line journal presenting scholarship on representations of romantic love in popular media, now and in the past, from anywhere in the world. We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions from all relevant disciplines, including Art, Communications, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Education, English, Film Studies, History, LGBTQ Studies, Marketing, Philosophy, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology, Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as interdisciplinary approaches.

and

For its inaugural issue (Winter 2010), the Journal of Popular Romance Studies is now considering papers on representations of romantic love in popular media, now or in the past, from anywhere in the world.

For more details about submitting a paper to JPRS, see the full Call for Submissions.

IASPR's Second Annual Conference on Popular Romance will be held from 5-7 August 2010 in Leuven, Belgium. The theme of the conference is "Theorizing Romance" and

IASPR is seeking proposals for innovative panels, papers, roundtables, discussion groups, and multi-media presentations that contribute to a sustained conversation about popular romance across all genres and in all media.

Conference goals:

* To bring to bear contemporary critical theory on the texts, paratexts, and extra-texts of all forms and media of popular romance
* To theorize the nature and examine the tension and relations between all genres, forms, and media of popular romance
* To include comparatist and intercultural analyses of popular romance by examining the differences between national traditions of popular romance and the translations of popular romance in and across national and cultural boundaries.

For more details see the Call for Proposals.

Bollywood Romance

Laura Vivanco

Eric's at Romancing the Blog today, discussing and recommending some Bollywood movies:

A few years ago, as I was wrapping up my first class on romance fiction, an Indian American student told me that she had loved these novels partly because they reminded her of Bollywood movies. When I told her that I’d never seen one, she was shocked [...]

Om Shanti Om, whose reincarnation / mystery / revenge / love story plot and echoes of older movies reminds me [...] contributed lots of catch phrases to our family lexicon, including [...] the movie’s big quotable motto: “If it isn’t a happy ending, then the movie isn’t over yet.”

Our latest favorite is a movie set in Amristar, the Punjabi city you might have seen in Bride and Prejudice. It’s called Rab Ne Bana di Jodi, which means something like “A Couple Made by God,” and its plot draws on all sorts of tropes familiar to romance readers : the abrupt marriage of convenience (in this case, to please a father); courtship under a secret identity; healing and redemption through love. Again there’s the mix of sentiment and humor, subtle and broad; again there are lots of winks and inside jokes that I’m actually starting to get. What really wows me in the movie, though, is that it’s a version of Inspirational romance, but with a very different version of religious faith and its relationship to romantic love. My favorite song in the movie, “Tujh Mein Rab Dikhta Hai” (”In You I See God / Oh, What Shall I Do?”), features our hero by turns in a temple (Hindu? Sikh? I’m not sure), then a church, then a mosque, singing a hymn to his wife the whole time. I don’t know if that’s anything special to an Indian viewer–there’s a similar ecumenical theme in another film I liked, the historical epic Jodha Akhbar–but I’ll tell you, it blew me away and has been haunting me ever since.

Please join Eric over there to read the rest of his post and join in the conversation.

Georgette Heyer: Colloquium and Call for Papers

Laura Vivanco

Via the RomanceScholar listserv and jay Dixon comes news of a forthcoming colloquium on Georgette Heyer:

This conference, organised jointly by Lucy Cavendish College and Anglia Ruskin University, is aimed at all those with an interest in Heyer's historical novels, whether academics or general readers. It will include formal papers and more informal discussion sessions. We would welcome papers on any aspect of Heyer's historical novels. Possible topics might include:

• sources and influences
• theoretical approaches to her works
• critical and popular reception
• class, gender and sexuality

Proposals for 20 minute papers should be sent to me, Sarah Brown [...], by 30th June 2009.

The colloquium will be held at Lucy Cavendish College on Saturday 7 November 2009. Professor Sarah Annes Brown, of Anglia Ruskin University, is "planning a short presentation on Lady of Quality, inspired by the writings of the late Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick."


I took the photo of the cover of Lady of Quality from Of Books and Bicycles, which has a review of the novel.