tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post2801325245078930616..comments2024-03-26T01:10:13.720+00:00Comments on Teach Me Tonight: The Berlatsky Affair, Part 2 E. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-75500162575172174862014-04-27T22:38:58.494+01:002014-04-27T22:38:58.494+01:00Thanks, Laura! In light of your comment, and Suni...Thanks, Laura! In light of your comment, and Sunita's above, I'm going to revise a couple of paragraphs in the piece, so that they're more accurate and more honest. Will preserve the originals for the sake of the record, as I did in post #1.<br />E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-1481871751580760152014-04-27T21:54:02.212+01:002014-04-27T21:54:02.212+01:00"my gut sense is that very few academics work..."my gut sense is that very few academics working on romance have ever had the kind of expertise in the genre that you can find at the best romance blogs."<br /><br />OK, first of all I'm going to skirt the whole issue of what constitutes the "best blogs" because that might involve a discussion rather similar to the one about canon and authority so I'll just think about this in terms of "big" romance blogs/sites.<br /><br />I'm not at all sure about what you're claiming here, particularly as some of the academics working on romance actually blog (or have blogged) at one of the bigger romance blogs. I'm thinking in particular here of Sarah Frantz and Janet/Robin at Dear Author and Gwendolyn E. Osborne at The Romance Reader.<br /><br />As far as reading huge numbers of romances is concerned, I have a strong feeling that jay Dixon (who's been an editor at Mills & Boon) has read a vast number of HM&Bs. And I doubt there can be very many people who have read more Nora Roberts romances than An Goris has. <br /><br />I'm not sure, because I haven't met as many romance academics as you have, but I'd suggest that a fair number of the current crop of academics working on romance have been romance readers as long, or longer, than they've been academics. Given the vast size of the genre, and the expertise of other romance readers, this doesn't mean that this type of romance scholar is more authoritative than other readers but they do exist and shouldn't be stripped of their expertise as romance readers just because, as academics, it behooves us to be humble and not claim a specially authoritative status when speaking or writing about the genre.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-19862589293545213542014-04-27T21:12:00.413+01:002014-04-27T21:12:00.413+01:00Thanks, Sunita. Let me think about this, and addr...Thanks, Sunita. Let me think about this, and address it, either in this post (as I did in part 1, in italics), or in part 3. E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-54928456423797142252014-04-27T21:07:58.635+01:002014-04-27T21:07:58.635+01:00I’m taken aback by this post, Eric. When you said ...I’m taken aback by this post, Eric. When you said you would address your contributions to the article, I was expecting something else. This part in particular stands out to me:<br /><br />“Ruh-roh! Looks like Berlatsky's not the only person getting in trouble today. This is the moment in the piece that I feel kind of sick about. Not just because I referred to "fan sites," although that annoyed some readers on Twitter, who don't think of themselves as "fans." (The term is often used dismissively or pejoratively, of course; it also doesn't necessarily signal expertise or sophistication.) Rather, I feel bad because that email was the moment when I as a go-to academic could have read into the record the whole panoply of lists and discussions, essays and debates that goes on in the romance community: material that I learned a lot from when I started out, just like Berlatsky, and which has gone from strength to strength over the past ten years. I missed that chance, and I can't help but wonder how the piece would have been different if I hadn't.”<br /><br />You had the opportunity to offer a simple, unvarnished apology to the people you condescendingly described as “fans” and operators of “fan sites.” Smart Bitches as a site and Sarah Wendell as an author and blogger have done a huge amount to bring positive visibility to the romance genre and the romance community. Sarah should be honored for that, not dismissed.<br /><br />You recognize that “fan” has a more pejorative connotation in romance than it does in other genre communities, and yet your greatest regret is not that you misrepresented as inexpert and unsophisticated the people from whom you have learned. Rather, it is that you “missed that chance,” the chance to be a teacher and thought leader, and also to improve a flawed article. <br /><br />You then anticipate the criticism that this post is mostly about you, not the romance *reading* community, and acknowledge a “grovel” to ward off that criticism. I don’t see a grovel. I see thousands of words, written by one man, about another man’s thousands of words, with an inexplicable disregard for the many, many women on whose expertise those thousands of words rely. <br /><br />Sunitahttp://vacuousminx.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com