Friday, August 29, 2008

PCA Conference 2009 - Call for Papers

The Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association will be holding their National Conference in New Orleans, April 8-11, 2009. More details can be found on their website.

The area chairs for romance fiction, Eric Selinger and Darcy Martin, are putting out a call for papers:

We are considering proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and “special panels” featuring authors or editors. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.

Should you or any of your colleagues be interested in submitting a proposal or have any questions, please contact one or both of the area chairs (see below). Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

We are interested in any and all topics about or related to romance fiction: all genres, all kinds, and all eras.

Some possible topics (although we are not limited to these):

--Individual Novels or Authors
--New Directions in Romance Scholarship (historicist, formalist, post-colonial, queer-theoretical, etc.)
--Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Romance, and same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts
--Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing authors and texts (erotic romance, SF romance, chick-lit, urban fantasy, highbrow / lowbrow crossover texts, etc.)
--African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
--Young Adult Romance and Chick-lit (series, novels, authors, communities)
--Category Romance (its past history, recent and forthcoming lines, changing demographics, etc.)
--History of Romance Fiction and its major subgenres (major authors and texts, turning points in the development of the genre or any subgenre)
--Romance and Region: places, histories, mythologies, traditions
--Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation; romance manga; non-Western writers, readers, and publishers; local, national, and multinational publishing)
--Romance communities and the Romance Industry: authors, readers, publishers, websites, blogs

If you are a romance author or editor and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the romance genre, please contact us!

As we did last year in San Francisco, the Romance Fiction area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field. Of particular interest this year: the new International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) with its affiliated scholarly publication, Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS)!

Submit a one-page (150-250 word) proposal or abstract (via regular mail or e-mail) by November 15, 2008, to the Area Chairs in Romance:

Eric Selinger
Dept. of English
DePaul Univ.
802 West Belden Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
773-325-4475
eselinge@depaul.edu

Darcy Martin
Women's Studies
East Tennessee State University
(423) 439-6311
martindj@etsu.edu

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