It's the morning, I wanted to post about some journal articles, and those seemed like good enough reasons to include this picture. However, the journal I'd really like to bring to your attention is not the Morning Journal but Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice. As explained in an introduction by guest editor Suzanne Milton, This special issue of Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, devoted to essays written about selected contemporary American romance fiction writers, is intended to provide instructors with bio-bibliographical information about several novelists, highlighting primary themes and motifs, with some analysis of the author’s contribution to the genre. Each entry provides a comprehensive list of the author’s fiction works that can be further explored in the classroom. This issue may also be of interest to researchers, librarians and readers who wish to learn more about a particular novelist.Unfortunately the articles are liberally sprinkled with editing errors (Sarah Frantz's surname was misspelled, for example).
There's lots of food for thought and discussion, though. For example, Milton writes that
contemporary romance can be traced back to the 1980’s when historical romance was still popular, but a variety of sociological trends created a socio-psychological shift and romance writers responded to these changes by creating more assertive heroines who played an increasingly significant role in shaping their own destiny.There seems to be an implication in there that historical romance is no longer popular, which seems a rather odd idea to me. In addition, although I'm aware that significant changes took place in the genre in the 1980s, I wonder why Milton didn't decide to trace the modern romance genre back rather further than that. I don't think any history of the genre would be complete without some mention of Mills & Boon (now part of Harlequin), which came into existence in 1908 and published contemporary romances long before the 1980s. One might also wish to mention Mary Stewart, who
is considered by many to be the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel. She was among the first to integrate mystery and love story, seamlessly blending the two elements in such a way that each strengthens the other. Pamela Regis writes, "Stewart's influence extends to every writer of romantic suspense, for Stewart understood and perfected this hybrid of romance and mystery and used it as a structure for books so beautifully written that they have endured to become part of the canon of the twentieth-century romance novel." Popular authors continue to list her books among their favorites and cite her as influential to their own work. And even thirty years after publication, her books continue to be reprinted again and again. (MaryStewartNovels.com)The essays in this volume of Teaching American Literature, which are all in pdf format, are as follows:
- Gillian Mason's "Rosemary Rogers: The Positive Power of Romance and Sexual Fantasy."
- Suzanne Milton's "Danielle Steel: Bringing Family Issues to Light." Milton writes that "Danielle Steel is one of the most widely-read romance fiction writers of this century. [...] Sixty-five of her writings fall into the category of romance fiction." Although I haven't read any of Danielle Steel's novels, I got the distinct impression from this essay that, unlike romances, which focus on a central couple, Steel's novels tend to be more akin to sagas since they cover a long span of the heroine's life, or even tell the story of more than one generation of a family.
- Sarah S. G. Franz's [sic] "Suzanne Brockmann: The Military and the Romance." Sarah's a persuasive advocate for Brockmann, but at first I wondered if this claim went a little too far: "Suzanne Brockmann, New York Times best-selling and RITA-award-winning author, pioneered and popularized military romances." Heyer's An Infamous Army, for example, is a military romance and her The Spanish Bride is historical fiction/military romance. I suppose, though, that one can have many pioneers and there certainly seems to be a consensus that, in the words of AAR's Blythe Barnhill, Brockmann's Tall, Dark, and Dangerous mini-series started the Navy SEALS trend."
- Wendy Wagner's "Jennifer Crusie: Romance as Academic Question." I'd be really, really interested to know what evidence (other than the subject matter of the novel) Wagner has for this:
One of the subplots of Trust Me On This involves Crusie's subtle mockery of academic life. [...] Trust Me On This reflects Crusie's disenchantment with academic life; at around this time, Crusie put her dissertation writing on hold in order to complete the MFA program at Ohio State. (4-5)
Wagner goes on to add thatIn an essay she wrote for Paradoxa in 1997, Crusie argues that romance fiction is not fantasy but instead is centered on women's reality [...] This essay has a fitting placement at the end of her academic career and basically asserts her divergence from academic feminism and the academic literary canon. (5)
Yet, as Wagner notes (7-8) Crusie edited a collection of essays and short stories (published in 2005) about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I'd tend to think of as forming part of "the academic literary canon." And what of Crusie's "This Is Not Your Mother's Cinderella: The Romance Novel As Feminist Fairy Tale," an essay published in Romantic Conventions, a 1999 collection of essays published by Bowling Green State University Popular Press and written by academics about the romance genre? I'd also have to conclude that when Wagner wrote this she hadn't read the blog post Crusie wrote in July 2007 in which Crusie revealed thatLast week, out of the blue, I had the inexplicable urge to finish my PhD. It’s been hanging fire for over ten years, but suddenly the need was there. And because I am impulsive, I e-mailed good people at OSU and said, “Can I come back and finish?” and by the end of the day, I had half of my committee and a welcome back from the head of the English Department.
- Fahamisha Patricia Brown's "Beverly Jenkins: African American History and the Romance Novel." Although this is the shortest of all the essays, it goes a long way towards explaining why Jenkins is "the first African American writer since Frank Yerby (1916-1991) to establish a reputation as an author of American historical romance, Beverly Jenkins today stands alone" (3).
- Patricia Kennedy Bostian's "Amanda Scott: Bringing History to Life." Bostian states that "the successful heroine of the Regency is one whose values are firmly planted in the 20th century, while the setting is meticulously 18th century" (1). I suspect some readers of this blog might disagree with that.
- Leslie Haynesworth's "Janet Evanovich: Comedy and Romance."
I found Louis Rhead's poster for the Morning Journal at Wikimedia Commons.
Hello! Wendy here. :)
ReplyDeleteApparently, an entire paragraph of my original piece was edited out. It reads as follows:
"However, Crusie is also working on three more collaborative novels, two more with Mayer, and another collaborative romance titled Dogs and Goddesses with Anne Stuart and Lani Diane Rich. Her commitment to writing collaboratively has led to a break with her longtime agent but also has revitalized her creatively, according to a recent entry on her blog, Argh Ink. Crusie wants to further explore the nature of collaborative writing and has explored returning to graduate school to write her dissertation on the subject."
I did write the piece originally about 3 years ago, which accounts for more of the emphasis on the end of her academic career.
The issue of the P&P book is more up for debate. I'm not sure it stands up as "academic" writing. It was meant for a popular audience.
Hello, Wendy! Thanks for coming over to clarify a few things
ReplyDeleteApparently, an entire paragraph of my original piece was edited out.
Ah. Sarah mentioned that her piece had been unexpectedly edited in this way too, in quite a few places. I wonder why it was done, because I'd have thought that in an online journal there wouldn't be significant space constraints. A few more pages in a pdf document certainly aren't going to cause trouble at the printers/bindery the way they might in a print journal.
I did write the piece originally about 3 years ago
I'll just have to say "Ah" again, and hope I don't begin to sound like a goldfish ;-) I did read on the Romance Scholar list, a while ago, that this collection of essays was initially intended for publication somewhere else, which I suppose explains the delay.
It's a real pity that that paragraph was edited out, because Crusie's career has taken an interesting new direction in recent years.
The issue of the P&P book is more up for debate. I'm not sure it stands up as "academic" writing. It was meant for a popular audience.
You're quite right that most of the P&P book can't be classified as "academic" writing, but I think P&P itself can be included in the "academic literary canon." So I mentioned the BenBella P&P volume in order to add a bit of nuance to your statement that Crusie was asserting "her divergence from academic feminism and the academic literary canon."
My impression is that right from the start of her career as a romance author Crusie rejected some parts of the "academic literary canon" but not others. In her Paradoxa essay she recounts how
I had to read Madame Bovary, I had to read Anna Karenina, I had to read “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” I had to read Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Lawrence. I had to see Hester Prynne as the great American heroine who triumphs by remaining celibate for the rest of her endless life.
She turned her back on that tradition of women heroines when she found the romance genre, but her ongoing relationship with Austen suggests she didn't reject all of the literary canon. Similarly, I have the impression from reading her essays that Crusie took issue with some academic feminists, but not all of them. In a 1998 essay she wrote that
if romance challenges patriarchy, why is it so reviled by radical feminists? Because it challenges deeply held beliefs [...]. First, romance fiction says that women like traditionally female things.
Romances tell the uncomfortable truth that many women like shopping, home decorating, and babies. I'm a passionate feminist, and I remember very well the fight in the seventies to overturn the assumption that the only things women were about were shopping, decorating, and babies, so I understand why books that emphasize these things scare some feminists. But while it's true that these aren't the only things women are about, it's also true that they're what a lot of us are about some of the time, and that we like reading about them.
So although Crusie seems here to be distancing herself from radical feminists, she's still classifying herself as a feminist. In the same essay she also wrote that
Not all feminists reject the rape fantasy, either; Susie Bright has argued that the politically correct sexuality demanded in the past is repressive and has proposed a "Do Me Feminism" based on the theory that if a woman likes it, it's good regardless of political thought, an idea that seems obvious given the lack of excitement generated by the term "politically correct sex." Romance fiction has been "Do Me Feminist" for decades.
So I'm suggesting that (a) both "academic feminism" and "the academic literary canon" are more diverse than your sentence perhaps suggested and (b) that Crusie's rejection of some works in the literary canon, and her rejection of what some academic feminists have written about the genre, doesn't constitute rejection of the entire canon or of all academic feminists.
I know it's a fairly minor point in your essay, and one which would have come across differently had you been allowed to keep in that rather important paragraph, so I hope this doesn't come across as a criticism of the whole essay.
I have been told that the essays will be reverting to the original, much longer, unedited essays. It wasn't a case of space, so much as a case of trying to instill a thematic rather than a biographical understanding of the authors under consideration that inspired the editing.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would of course argue that I don't go too far in my claim. While there are other examples of military romance and many other extremely successful examples of military suspense, I think Brockmann did the job to bring those two things together in ways that appealed to much larger audiences. I would argue that the apparent jump in male readership of romances comes primarily from military romantic suspense, of which Brockmann is the very much acknowledged queen. JMNSHO. :)
I misquoted Susie Bright, so please don't stick her with Do-Me Feminism even though I still thing it's brilliant.
ReplyDeleteAs for the academic article, I think once you're an academic it gets into your blood and even if you leave a university system, you're still a wonk. There's plenty of evidence for that, I think; never get stuck in an elevator with me and ask about reader response and the romance. Or the impact of gender on narrative strategies.
But I think both arguments have merit--see, academic--so I'm just fascinated to watch.
Just put a note in there about Susie Bright not saying that or she'll come for me with a pitchfork. That was bad academic writing on my part.
I have been told that the essays will be reverting to the original, much longer, unedited essays.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad about that, because it seems that some important bits got cut during the editing.
I would argue that the apparent jump in male readership of romances comes primarily from military romantic suspense
I know RWA stats showed a rise in the numbers of men reading romance, but did they break down the figures so that it was possible to tell which genres the men preferred? And what about J. D. Robb and other non-military romantic suspense authors? What proportion of male readers do you think they have? Is it Brockmann's SEALs which particularly attract male readers, as opposed to the "suspense" part of Brockmann's novels? Or is it something else about her books e.g. the writing style, their construction?
I misquoted Susie Bright, so please don't stick her with Do-Me Feminism even though I still thing it's brilliant.
Yes, I remember that last time I quoted that bit of your essay Susie Bright turned up to clarify her position:
I didn't, and wouldn't, invent that tag, "do-me feminism"-- it was a snarky headline created by Esquire's editors in the 80s to describe the wave of sex-radical feminists at the time.
And I wouldn't argue-- how could anyone, who likes to argue?-- that anything is "good" regardless of political reality.
I have written about rape fantasies, and if you don't mind, could I offer you the URL:
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2006/09/rape_scenes.html
So if anyone wants to click across to find out more about what Susie Bright thinks, that's a link you can follow.
As I was telling Sarah earlier, I've been so busy with the end of our term (we're on a trimester system) that I haven't even reread the entire piece to figure out what was edited, and I wonder if I was more nuanced about the academic question. It could also be sloppy writing on my part.
ReplyDeleteI think (I say, trying to scrape together memories of the writing of the piece, originally written 3 years ago) I was making a point about leaving the institution of academia, the immersion in that world with its own strange rules and expectations. My PhD was at Duke during the years Fish was chair of the department. Enough said? I relate to that sense of breaking away from that *kind* of institution to do something that is also academic but not part of "academia." I see my role as that in-between, translating traditional academic concerns to popular audiences, and I perceive Jenny as being in that space as well (though I may be misreading her ;).
This upcoming term I am teaching the lit survey, and I am so excited because I've decided to teach the Buffy episode "Halloween" alongside "Hidden Woman" (Colette) and "A Rose for Emily." And I have done this before to great success: episodes of "The Office" alongside "Bartleby" and "Death of a Salesman." I love what I do, the space I inhabit, the translator, arguing for the academic complexity of popular texts and the approachability of the academic/old-fashioned texts, to an audience of students who never expected to learn about these connections.
Anyway, none of that probably came out in my piece because I was also trying to figure out how to pull analyses of Welcome to Temptation, Fast Women and Bet Me together. ;)
I am really glad the essays are getting fair treatment. It would be terrible were they to be edited without author approval.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I am reading my first Brockmann thanks to Sarah's posts about her. I will definitely read that essay when I am done.
I would have to say that the most disconcerting thing to me in entering the "romance world" has been that whenever people refer to feminism they either don't refer to anybody in particular or they refer to people like Bright who are activists.
It would be more helpful to me to see, instead of "academic feminists" or "feminists", to tell me, the reader, who is against romance? What exactly is she against and why? Where can I go to read her argument to see if you have done it justice?
My PhD was at Duke during the years Fish was chair of the department. Enough said? I relate to that sense of breaking away from that *kind* of institution to do something that is also academic but not part of "academia."
ReplyDeleteWho is/was Fish? Even without knowing that, I can imagine why someone might want or need to take a break from working as an academic in a university setting.
I see my role as that in-between, translating traditional academic concerns to popular audiences, and I perceive Jenny as being in that space as well (though I may be misreading her ;).
I definitely agree with you on that. I really like the comparison Jenny drew between Shakespearian sonnets and category romance, for example. That's maybe not exactly what you're talking about, but it does bring the two sides closer together.
whenever people refer to feminism they either don't refer to anybody in particular or they refer to people like Bright who are activists.
Some people have been more specific. For example, Pam Regis does include quotations that she specifically takes issue with, including some from Germaine Greer, Tania Modleski and Leslie Rabine. In "Romancing Reality: The Power of Romance Fiction to Reinforce and Re-Vision the Real" Crusie quotes from Nyquist, Dubino, Modleski and Radway.
whenever people refer to feminism they either don't refer to anybody in particular or they refer to people like Bright who are activists
ReplyDeleteIt's true that activists get a lot of attention; I'd be curious to hear who you feel is missing. However, if you're getting the impression that those generalities indicate a monolithic (or negative) idea of feminism, then I disagree. First, if you search this site for "feminist critique", you get what I think is an interesting snapshot of how romance scholars' work can intersect with feminist studies.
Second, I think that shorthand is largely a matter of assuming everyone here has been reading the romance blogs for a while and shares some common knowledge. There are a number of specific examples that have received a lot of attention in the online romance community. The one that got the most attention recently, I think, was Bindel calling "heterosexual romance" "detestable trash" that "promotes - the sexual submission of women to men". The commentary on that article was all over quite a few romance blogs for weeks; there's a lot on it here.
While I consider myself a feminist and I consider genre romance to be a mix of feminist, anti-feminist, and a-feminist (eu-feminist?), I think the loudest feminist takes on romance *have* often been strikingly negative--whether calling romance porn or blaming romance for reinforcing The Patriarchy. Even Radway's rather problematic research on romance started there: from the intro, "Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture." I don't see much more respect for the female reader in "romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men" than in "romance makes women unhappy with their lot" (f'rex). In Bindel's case, I think I was one of the few who thought she had a point, albeit horribly couched and surrounded by silliness--but I admit her tone was completely in line with much of the anti-porn, anti-men, anti-sex type of rhetoric, so perhaps I give her too much credit.
RfP -- I think my views on this different enough from the consensus here at TMT that I'll be better off not diverting the thread and doing my own post over at RRR. but in brief, my view is that there has been no sustained or significant feminist theoretical critique of romance, period. To me, rather than attacking poor old Janice Radway yet again -- and never has a dead horse been beaten like that woman's article on this subject, we need to be asking why romance is so far off the radar and what can be done about it. Obviously, Sarah and Laura and Eric et al are trying to create a space for -- among many other things -- this dialogue with panels at the PCA, the RAW, this blog, and a new online journal. But what will it take to get academic feminists to engage? To me that is the bigger issue. I'll try to defend this claim at length later this week.
ReplyDeleteJessica, I guess I'm confused. I AM an academic feminist. Or a feminist academic. And if you want to get people who identify as "academic feminist" rather than the other way around, they've got to be interested in doing it themselves, and there just aren't that many out there. I'll be interested in reading your post about this.
ReplyDeletemy view is that there has been no sustained or significant feminist theoretical critique of romance, period. To me, rather than attacking poor old Janice Radway yet again -- and never has a dead horse been beaten like that woman's article on this subject
ReplyDeleteI'd agree that there's been a lot of, and perhaps even too much, attention paid to Radway's book, but that's partly because it was so influential.
That said, there have been quite a lot of others writing about romance from a feminist perspective, and among those quite a lot with a feminist perspective critical of the romance genre.
Have you had a look at Lynne Pearce and Jackie Stacey's Romance Revisited? Pearce's work on romance has definitely been sustained, because she's published frequently on the topic.
There are others who've written only briefly about romance but still had something significant to say. Teresa Ebert's "The Romance of Patriarchy: Ideology, Subjectivity, and Postmodern Feminist Cultural Theory," Cultural Critique 10 (1988): 19-57 is an example of this kind of essay, and if this is the same Teresa Ebert, then her work on feminism's been "sustained" even if her work on romance hasn't been.
Mary Beth Tegan, whose 2007 "Becoming Both Poet and Poem: Feminists Repossess the Romance" is in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) is apparently going to be publishing more about the genre since this article forms just a part of Tegan's doctoral project.
I'd be interested in reading Wendy Larcombe's 2005 Compelling Engagements : Feminism, Rape Law and Romance Fiction. (Annandale, N.S.W.: Federation Press). There's an excerpt available here but it's not in a library close to me.
I've still only read a small proportion of the items on the bibliography of romance scholarship, but I'm fairly sure there are others I could/should have mentioned.
rather than attacking poor old Janice Radway yet again
ReplyDeleteI didn't intend that at all. I swiped her gingerly, en route to demonstrating that her work starts from the viewpoint that there have been harsh feminist critiques of genre romance.
I can't find quite the right quote, but I distinctly remember reading some vitriol by Germaine Greer. Granted she's quite out of date (e.g. her insistence that romance fiction is sexless in order to further flatten women's libido). However, those older critiques are still influential today.
Here's a little Greer: in Feminism, femininity and popular culture, Ch. 4 "Reading Romantic Fiction", Joanne Hollows says Greer described "romance novels as the 'escapist literature of love and marriage voraciously consumed by housewives' (1970, 214)". (That's the only chapter I've read.)
Google provides.... Perhaps what I'm thinking of is what Bronwyn Parry mentions: "I realized as we talked how much of the early feminist critique of romance as a genre over the years has explicity devalued women and their interests, by objectifying romance readers (Greer referred to them - us! - as 'submenials')"
The Greer material is in "The Female Eunuch" (1970). I don't have the passages handy, but will try to hunt them up.
ReplyDeleteYou know, this debate about romance and feminism--which is also about how we romance scholars talk about the history of our own discipline--would make a really, really good panel for this year's PCA conference in New Orleans!
It just so happens that the deadline for submitting proposals (title and brief abstract) is coming up this Saturday, November 15, so if the spirit moves you...
PCA / ACA National Conference: New Orleans, April 8-11, 2009
(Conference info: http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php)
CALL FOR PAPERS: Romance Fiction
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.
We are interested in any and all topics about or related to romance fiction: all genres, all kinds, and all eras.
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 AT depaul DOT edu
Darcy Martin
Women's Studies
East Tennessee State University
(423) 439-6311
martindj AT etsu DOT edu
Eric, are you actually spamming your own blog?!
ReplyDeleteSarah, a boy's got to do what a boy's got to do!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, we have far fewer papers and proposals coming in so far--the economy, the location of the conference, who knows? Time to throw away all my conscience and pride, or at least what's left of it!