Tuesday, December 30, 2025

New Publications: Teaching, Translation, Sex, Psychoanalysis, Subgenres and more

Allen, Amanda K. (2025) "Introducing (Un)defined YA / Series / Romance." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 14.

Aulia, Aura Ratu, Griselda Callista, Hasya Ashila Supriatna, Muhammad Ihsan Fadhilah, Syifa Hana Nabila, and Zaira Yasmina Faizal. 2025. “A Comparison Study of the Effects of Romantic Films and Fictional Stories on Romantic Beliefs Among Young Adults”. Psikologi Prima 8 (2):222-38.

Clitheroe, Heather (2025). "Teaching Romance and Erotica: Designing a Consent-based, Trauma-informed Online Classroom." Journal of Integrated Studies 16.2:1-10.

Costa, Manoela dos Santos da (2025). The trope enemies to lovers : an analysis of Book Lovers and Love, Theoretically. Undergraduate Dissertation, Universidade federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

Crawford, Joseph (2025). “‘I'm Alright, It's Just so Horrible’: Teaching Romance Fictions, Pre‐ and Post‐#MeToo.” Literature Compass 22.4.

Cuthbert, Kate (2026). How to Judge a Book by its Cover: New Analytical Tools for the Book Covers and TitlesAbingdon, Oxon: Routledge. [An excerpt can be found here. I'm guessing it's based on Kate Cuthbert's thesis, details of which can be found here.]
 
Echaoui, Assala and Nada Ferdjallah (2025). The Power of Gossip: A Feminist Analysis of Julia Quinn's Romancing Mister Bridgerton (2002). Masters, Université 8 mai 1945 - GUELMA.
 
Hines, Christian M. (2025). "Main Character Energy: Black Girls Getting the Love They Deserve in Elise Bryant’s Young Adult Novels." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 14 
 
Hnatiuk, Daryna (2025). Translation project: Translating humour and witty elements in the romantic comedy novel Bananapants by Penny ReidMA thesis, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University.

Johnson, Natasha (2025). "Computing the Formal and Institutional Boundaries of Contemporary Genre and Literary Fiction." Anthology of Computers and the Humanities 1. 
 
Keeler, Janet K. (2025) "Romance In The Round: A Content Analysis Of YA Novels About Fat Girls Looking For Love." International Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 6.10: 9-16.
 
Kollman, Kathleen W. Taylor (2026). The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024New York: Bloomsbury. [The author said that "There are two romance novels covered: Madam President, an F/F romance by Blayne Cooper and T. Novan, and Red White and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston (as well as its film adaptation). I also talk in here a bit about lesbian romances in particular." There's an excerpt available here.]
 
Lathifah, Naafiatun Nur and Adjie Aditya Sanjaya (2025). "Political And Economic Ideology In The Production, Distribution, And Consumption Process Of Popular Romance Literature On The Wattpad Application." International Conference of Humanities and Social Science (ICHSS) 5: 516–525. 
 
 
Meredith, Tami, Maryanne Fisher and Nicole Giddens (2025, though online first). “Babies, Brides, and Billionaires: Computational and Linguistic Analysis of Harlequin Romance Novel Cover Text.” Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. [Abstract
 

Novakova, Iva,  Olivier Kraif and Marion Gymnich (2025). "Exploring the ‘language of intimacy’ in English and French romance novels by means of a corpus-driven approach." International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. Online First. [Abstract]
 
Palmer, Margaret M. (2025). “Stop Acting Like a Diva”: Responses to Sexual Violence in Young Adult Romance NovelsSSM - Qualitative Research in Health.
 
Parnell, Claire (2025). "Platform Paratext: Reading Amazon Book Product Pages." Book History 28.2: 349-369. [Abstract] 
 
Raste, Anđela (2025). Classification of PUs in Julia Quinn's Bridgerton: The Viscount Who Loved Me. Masters thesis, University of Zadar. 


Ripoll Fonollar, Mariana (2025). “Romanticising the Suffragette: Historical Romances and the Commodification of the Cause.” Archivum 75.2: 465-501. [The article is open access. In the entry in the RSDB I have added a note about reader responses to it.]
 
Stevens, Alyssa, Roulstone, Sariah, Baker, Matthew J., Bergeson, Susanna
Housley, Yulin, Wood, Taylor (2025). "Book Descriptions Across Genres: A Content Analysis of “Contemporary Romance” and “Mystery and Thriller” Descriptions." Publishing Research Quarterly. [Abstract]
 
Stevenson, London (2025). Unbound Subgenres: Age Categorizations in Contemporary Romance and their Implications. Masters thesis, University of Alabama in Huntsville. [Excerpt
 
Tahreem, and Fatima Umay (2025). "Love Across Time: A Comparative Study of Romantic Expression in 19th-Century and Contemporary Fiction." Journal of Applied Linguistics and TESOL 8.4:1370-1378.  
 
Tebaldi, Catherine (2025). "Sex and the Supremacy of Christ: Sex and Romance in Christian Nationalism." On Christian Nationalism: Critical and Theological Perspectives. Ed. David M. Gides and Joan Braune. London: Routledge. 168-183. [Abstract. There is a short section on romance, but the name of the romance author is given incorrectly.]
 
Vargová, Veronika (2025). "Evolving Portrayals: From Freak Shows to Autism Representation in Contemporary Romance Novels." Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. Online First. [Abstract]
 
Wallin Lämsä, Camilla (2025). Yearning Hours: Desire, Darcymania, and Readerly Attachments in the Digital Jane Austen Fandom. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.
 
Witherspoon, Steve (2025). "Women Running from Houses: How Gothic Romance Paperbacks of the 1960s and 1970s Adapted a Romantic-era Visual Language of Women in Danger." Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 38.2. 
 
and finally an article which isn't exactly academic, but an obituary for a literary author, Fanny Howe, because
In the beginning, before the books she wrote under her own name, there were two romance novels about nurses. In discussions of Howe’s work, they are treated as a footnote, another charming detail in a life rich with incident. But read looking backward, having seen all that came later, the nurse novels come to look like more than a curiosity. Instead, they are the place where Howe first experienced the plotting of a novel as a kind of existential struggle; where she began working through, in writing, the questions that would sustain and bewilder her. They deserve the kind of careful attention Howe’s later work often likened to a spiritual imperative.
This article, by Meghan Racklin, gives them that attention. 

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Harlequin France and AI Translation

I've just seen some bad news for the translators employed by Harlequin in France. From Livreshebdo:

Harlequin a contacté en novembre les traductrices et traducteurs de la collection « Azur » pour leur annoncer la fin de leur collaboration, rapportent l'Association des traducteurs littéraires de France et le collectif En chair et en os. En difficulté, la collection de romances courtes sera désormais traduite par l'agence de communication Fluent Planet qui s'appuie notamment sur des outils d'intelligence artificielle, confirme HarperCollins France, maison mère d'Harlequin.

I'll try translating that myself (without using AI!):

According to the Society of Literary Translators of France and the "In Flesh and Bone" group, in November Harlequin contacted the translators employed on the "Azur" series to announce the end of their collaboration. Harper Collins, Harlequin's parent company, confirmed that from now on this series of short romances will be translated by the communications agency Fluent Planet, which relies heavily on AI products.

The full text of the press release issued by the groups supporting the translators can be found here (in French). 

Tuesday, December 09, 2025

University of Liverpool's Online Romance Course

 

Dr Sam Hirst (who runs Romancing the Gothic) will be teaching "Falling in love with love: A History of Popular Romance", a course comprising 10 weekly sessions online (via Zoom), on Wednesdays at 6 - 7.30pm UK time, starting from Wednesday 21 January. 

There will be "online learning materials for you to engage with before and after each live session" and the course fee is £155 (concessions £80).

This module will explore the evolution of romance writing from the 18th century to the current day, looking not only at the novel but at the intertwined relationship between the romance novel and cinema. [...]

This course is aimed at romance readers and anyone who wants to explore the best-selling genre and most influential genre in publishing. Each week there will be a set text but extracts will also be provided as we are aware that participants will need to prioritise their reading.

Syllabus

  1. Amatory Fiction: 18th-Century Women Writing Desire
    • Text: Eliza Haywood, Fantomina (1724)
  2. The Society Romance: Austen and her Legacy
    • Text: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
    • Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1995, dir. Simon Langton)
  3. The Rise of the Byronic Hero
    • Text: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
  4. Orientalism and the Romance
    • Text: E. M. Hull, The Sheik (1919)
    • The Sheik (dir. Melford, US, 1921)
  5. The Regency Romance
    • Text: Georgette Heyer, The Quiet Gentleman (1951)
    • The Reluctant Widow (Knowles, UK, 1950)
  6. Mills and Boon, Category Romance and the 'Nursies'
    • Betty Neels, Tabitha in Moonlight (1972)
  7. Race and Romance
    • Beverley Jenkins, Indigo (1996)
  8. The Romantic Comedy and Second Chance Romance
    • Texts: The Philadelphia Story (dir. George Cukor, US, 1940)
    • The Lovebirds (dir. Michael Showalter, US, 2020)
  9. Queering the Romance
    • Text: Olivia Waite, Hen Fever (2020)
  10. Romantasy, Mixed Genres, and the future(s) of Romance
    • Text: Tasha Suri, The Isle of the Silver Sea (2025)

Full details can be found on the University of Liverpool's website.