Masculinity Studies Meets Popular Romance
Deadline: January 6, 2017
In her canonical and contested study Reading the Romance,
Janice Radway describes
the romance hero as characterized by an “exemplary” and “spectacular”
masculinity. Romantic films, TV, and popular music likewise offer what
Eva Illouz calls “ideal-typical” representations of men and masculinity,
even as popular culture often insists that
“real men” have no interest in romance media. What, then, can critical
and historical studies of men and masculinities offer to the study of
popular romance media? And what can attention to popular romance teach
us about blind-spots and other lacunae in the
study of men and masculinities?
The Journal of Popular Romance Studies solicits
papers for a special issue on masculinity and popular romance media,
now and in the past, from anywhere in the world. We are interested in
how masculinities are and have been represented in the texts of both
heterosexual and queer popular romance media, including
fan-produced media. We are also interested in papers on masculinity in
the marketing of such media (e.g., movie trailers and romance novel
covers), and in the discourse of the global romance communities that
produce, enjoy, and discuss such media (editorial
guidelines, recaps and reviews, blog posts, Tumblrs, etc.). Papers that
explore the intersection of masculinity with other cultural phenomena,
including race, religion, and class, are welcome.
For
this issue, we define both “romance” and “masculinities” broadly. We
are open to submissions about texts from the margins of love and romance
culture (e.g., “bromances”) as well
as those which focus on texts which participate wholeheartedly in the
popular culture of romantic love. We also recognize that masculinity
does not belong exclusively to cisgendered men’s bodies, and we
encourage the submission of papers that follow Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick’s call for scholars of gender “to drive a wedge in, early and
often, and if possible conclusively, between the two topics, masculinity
and men, whose relation to one another it is so difficult not to
presume.”
This
special issue will be edited by Jonathan A. Allan, Canada Research
Chair in Queer Theory (Brandon University) and Eric Murphy Selinger
(DePaul University). Papers of between 5,000
and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography, should be sent to
Erin Young (managing.editor@jprstudies.
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