Wednesday, March 05, 2008

RWA Research Grant

As announced by Fayetteville State University, Sarah's been awarded the 2008 - 2009 Romance Writers of America Research Grant. She's a lot happier about it than the lady on the left seems to be about her pile of money. Congratulations, Sarah!

Details of previous recipients of RWA research grants (including Eric) and the projects they worked on, are available at the RWA website.

And this means that the competition for the next RWA research grant is now open (closing date 1 December 2008):
The objectives of the program are:
1. To support theoretical and substantive academic research about genre romance texts and literacy practices.
2. To encourage a well-informed public discourse about genre romance texts and literacy practices.

Eligibility

The RWA Research Grant Program is open to faculty at accredited colleges and universities, independent scholars with significant publication records, and dissertation candidates who have completed all course work and qualifying exams. No candidate need be a member of the RWA.
More details can be found here.

Edited to add: Eric heard from the RWA that, in a departure from the conditions that applied in previous years, "the 2009-2010 RWA Research Grant is not restricted to American scholars; however, the maximum total funds granted will be 5,000 U.S. dollars."

The painting, "Lais Corinthiaca" is by Hans Holbein the Younger, and this photo is from Wikimedia Commons.

4 comments:

  1. You beat me to it, Laura. Thanks.

    And oops on the dates there for the FSU announcement, considering I wrote that announcement. I only just noticed now. ::sigh::

    I love the picture!!

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  2. Truly, a labour of love -- or romance, as the case may be,...

    Congratulations!

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  3. Excellent news, Sarah: congratulations. It may still take a long time for the romance genre to be accorded the same intellectual respect as has been won by other popular novels, such as thrillers and science fiction, but serious academic research and publication is the way to go. It is getting more and more difficult for people to make casual judgements of romance novels based on (gulp) the covers alone.
    :-)

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