From their website:
The Romance Area of the National Popular Culture Association is soliciting abstracts for the next annual conference, to held April 8-11, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia.
CFP: Reading the Romance Reader
Upload your 250-word proposal to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2025
What
does it mean to be a romance reader (or viewer, or listener, or any
other type of consumer)? Forty years ago, “creators” and “audience” were
understood as binary opposites, reader response theory felt like a
cutting-edge approach to genre fiction, and the idea of “participatory
culture” wasn’t even a gleam in Henry Jenkins’ eye. Since that time,
both Romancelandia and the scholarly tools for understanding and
navigating it have blossomed. Romance readers have more opportunities to
communicate their preferences to authors, publishers, and other
readers, giving them more influence over the genre. Multiple modalities
mean that romance enthusiasts can access new narratives more
immediately, in more locations, in more formats, and, if they choose,
with less visibility. At the same time, the romance genre is enjoying a
moment of public pride, and romance readers are visible—to the public,
to each other, online, in real life, to publishers and to bookstores—in
an unprecedented way.
We believe that romance scholarship has also entered a golden age (thank you, JPRS!), with scholars from different disciplines and different countries bringing fresh ideas, exploring new or overlooked texts and modalities, and introducing field-specific analytical tools that offer a richer understanding of people’s engagement with popular romance. We therefore think it’s past time to turn our collective attention to the consumers of popular romance. For our 2026 conference, we invite you to reread the romance reader (or viewer, listener, LARPer, etc.). Showcase your favorite romance community, show off your data, teach us how to use your methods, offer a case study of public engagement with romance, theorize the affordances of reading vs listening vs viewing the romance, or take a deep dive into the historical changes in what it means to be part of the audience for popular romance.
---
There are more details, which you can find here. Note that:
"If you would rather explore some other aspect of popular romance right now, you are very welcome to ignore our theme and submit a proposal on something else."
and
"Scholars, romance writers, romance readers/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area."
No comments:
Post a Comment