Thursday, September 13, 2018

News Round-up and Calls for Papers


On 29 August the Journal of Popular Romance Studies was added to the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS). This is an indicator of the quality of the journal and increases its visibility:
The main aim of ERIH has been from its very beginnings to enhance global visibility of high quality research in the humanities published in academic journals in various European languages all over Europe. The index enables researchers to better understand and promote the national and international importance of their research. (About)
Entertainment Weekly report that
Bea and Leah Koch, the sister duo who founded and own Los Angeles’ romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice, have signed an overall deal with Sony Pictures Television [...]. The Koch sisters will partner with Sony to develop romance-focused projects for television based on their unique connection to romance readers and authors.
A symposium is being held at the University of Warwick on 28th September, on the topic of "Imagining ‘We’ in the Age of ‘I’: Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture". Speakers include:
  • Abhija Ghosh (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) on ‘Orchestrating Romance: Nineties Romance Genre, Film Song and Bollywood’
  • Diana Holmes (University of Leeds), on ‘Plaisirs d’amour: love and popular fiction in contemporary France’ 
  • Lucy Sheerman (independent researcher) on ‘Reader I Mirrored Him: the recasting of romance tropes in Jane Eyre fanfiction'
If that makes you want to write a paper about love, then the call for papers for "Love, etc", A conference sponsored by the “Uses of Literature” Research Project at the University of Southern Denmark, October 3-4, 2019 might be of interest. The closing date for submissions is November 15 2018.

Alternatively, there are still a few days left before the closing date for submissions to the ACLA Book Lovers seminar: "Book Lovers welcomes abstracts that touch on any aspect of love". Abstracts must be received by Thursday, September 20, 2018 at 9 a.m. EST. The American Comparative Literature Association's 2019 Annual Meeting will take place at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, March 7th-10th, 2019.

There's also been a call for papers for a panel on Muslim Popular Culture in Asia: Aesthetics and Politics at the German Association for Asian Studies’ (DGA)'s biannual Conference on Contemporary Asia, which will be held in April 3–5, 2019 in Würzburg, Germany. The deadline for all paper proposal submissions is October 7, 2018, 6:00pm (CET).


Kate Cuthbert's keynote address to the 2018 Romance Writers of Australia conference, on "the romance novel and representations of sexuality after #MeToo" is now available online. It discusses hope, and how romance has a history of growing and changing.

In August a team from the Surgery and Emotion project introduced visitors to the Science Museum to Mills & Boon romances:
One participant said it was ‘such a fun station’ and that they’d ‘learnt a lot about Mills & Boon books’. Another commented it was ‘so fun’, ‘a good idea for an activity’, and that it encouraged her to think about ‘the cultural impact of medical fiction’. One attendee described it as an ‘awesome stall’, explaining that they ‘didn’t know anything about Mills & Boon before, it’s really made me think’. Finally, one visitor remarked that it was a ‘super enjoyable’ activity, and that they’d ‘learnt a lot about how the novels were ahead of their time, regarding females’ roles in a medical setting’.
More details here.

Sourcebooks is releasing new editions "of 11 of Heyer’s Regency romances as part of the Georgette Heyer Signature Collection" (Keira Soleore). The books in the "Georgette Heyer Signature Collection" include
praise from scores of bestselling authors, sharing their love of Heyer and why she’s such a gem. Each book includes a fun glossary of Regency slang, plus an Afterword by Heyer’s official biographer Jennifer Kloester, with fascinating insights about what Heyer thought about her own books and what was going on in her life at the time she was writing them. A Reading Group Guide helps readers delve into discussion of Heyer’s time and ours, and why the more things change, the more they stay the same (human nature for sure!).
Keira Soleore has interviewed Jennifer Kloester.


Saturday, September 01, 2018

New to the Romance Wiki: Emotions, Ethnocentrism, Evangelicals, Parody, Readers, Robin Hood, Translations

This is a long list: I should have posted an update earlier.

Capps, Stephanie Carol, 2017. 
"What You Read and What You Believe: Genre Exposure and Beliefs about Relationships". Master of Science thesis. University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, 2017. Pdf [This seems similar to the article below by Stern et al. I wonder if Capps changed surname between 2017 and 2018, as the first name and second initial are identical, as is the title of the paper.]
Jackson, Cia, 2017. 
"Harlequin Romance: The Power of Parody and Subversion." The Ascendance of Harley Quinn: Essays on DC's Enigmatic Villain. Ed. Shelley E. Barba and Joy M. Perrin. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017. 16-??. Excerpt [This is about how the DC comics parody romance novel conventions via the figure of Harley Quinn.]
 
Johnson, Valerie B., 2018. 
"What a Canon Wants: Robin Hood, Romance Novels, and Carrie Lofty’s What a Scoundrel Wants", Robin Hood and the Outlaw/ed Literary Canon, ed. Lesley Coote and Alexander L. Kaufman. ???: Routledge, 2018. 184-??? Excerpt
Lee, Zi-Ying and Min-Hsiu Liao, 2018. 
'The “Second” Bride: The Retranslation of Romance Novels'. Babel. Published online first 27 August 2018. Abstract and full pre-publication version
 
McAlister, Jodi, 2018. 
‘ “Feelings Like the Women in Books”: Declarations of Love in Australian Romance Novels, 1859–1891’, Emotions: History, Culture, Society 2.1: 91-112. Abstract
 
Neal, Lynn S., 2013.
‘Evangelical Love Stories: The Triumphs and Temptations of Romantic Fiction,’ in Evangelical Christians and Popular Culture: Pop Goes the Gospel, ed. Robert H. Woods, Jr, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara: Praeger): 1–20. Excerpt.
Olivarez, Omar, Ryan Hardie, and Kate G. Blackburn, 2018.
“The Language of Romance: An Open Vocabulary Analysis of the Highest Rated Words Used in Romance Novels.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology. First Published August 18, 2018. Abstract
Pérez‐Gil, María del Mar, 2018. 
"Exoticism, Ethnocentrism, and Englishness in Popular Romance Fiction: Constructing the European Other". Journal of Popular Culture. Published online first 19 July 2018. [Focuses on the Spanish "Other" in the English imagination.] Excerpt
Popova, Milena, 2018.
"Rewriting the Romance: Emotion Work and Consent in Arranged Marriage Fanfiction". Journal of Popular Romance Studies 7.
Stern, Stephanie C., Brianne Robbins, Jessica E. Black and Jennifer L. Barnes, 2018. 
"What You Read and What You Believe: Genre Exposure and Beliefs About Relationships." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. Abstract and a short summary I posted at my personal blog, focused on the findings about romance readers.

In other sections I've added:

Hall, Cailey. 
"The Consolation of Genre: On Reading Romance Novels", Los Angeles Review of Books, 27 August 2018.
Liu, S.-h, 2012. 
"The Translation/Mutation of Romantic Love: An Exploration of the Translation History of Modern Romances in Taiwan after 1960". PhD Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University. Abstract
 
Sebastian, Cat.
"Romance, Compassion, and Inclusivity (Or: How Romance Will Save the World)", Los Angeles Review of Books, 29 August 2018. [This also appeared in the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 19,  Romance]