New to the Romance Wiki Bibliography and other links

Laura Vivanco

Eric's had a post published as part of Read-a-Romance Month. Among other things, he discusses the importance of teaching romance fiction in universities:

To keep romance novels out of the classroom is to teach students there’s something radically unworthy about both these books and their readers. Sometimes it’s not even subtle. I had a senior colleague, now retired, who used to ask his intro to literature students if they’d ever read a Harlequin romance, and if anyone raised her hand—and it was usually a “her,” as you might expect—he’d say, in a withering tone, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” I had a student—a junior, a philosophy major, in our honors program—who couldn’t bring herself to buy the books for my seminar. “It’s just too embarrassing,” she told me. “I’m not the kind of person who reads books like these.”

I teach my classes for students who already love romance, and finally get the chance to say so. I teach my classes for students who’ve never thought about the genre, but are willing to give it a go. But most of all, I teach romance for students like that philosophy major: the students who think—or who’ve been told—that they’re too gifted, too jaded, too literary, too skeptical, too smart; too happily single, or married, or poly; too feminist, too radical, too queer, too male, and so on, to bother with “books like these.”

You can read the rest here. Jen Lois and Joanna Gregson, sociologists working on romance fiction, have also written a post for this month and it can be found here.

Amy Burge took romance scholarship to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a one-off show this afternoon. It went well but since it's not scheduled to be repeated, for anyone who's in Edinburgh and wants to see a performance about romance novels Amy recommends Charlotte Gallagher's "Carlotta de Galleon - A Fool for Love!"

The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love have a new blog, featuring interviews and updates on recent research.

New to the Romance Wiki Bibliography

Allan, Jonathan A., 2016. 

Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus. Regina: University of Regina Press. [See chapter 3, "Topping from the Bottom: Anne Tenino's Frat Boy and Toppy". A review of the book by Catherine M. Roach has been published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies]

 

Crawford, Joseph, 2014. 

The Twilight of the Gothic? Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance, 1991-2012. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014. [See also María T. Ramos-García's review of this book in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies]

 

Kahn, Laurie, director, 2015. 

Love Between the Covers. Blueberry Hill Productions. [This is a documentary about popular romance fiction and a review of it by Beth Driscoll was published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.]

 

McAlister, Jodi, 2016. 

'“You and I are humans, and there is something complicated between us”: Untamed and queering the heterosexual historical romance', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 5.2 (15 July 2016). [Focuses on Anna Cowan's Untamed (2013). A short response to this article can be found here.]

Wilkins, Kim, 2016. 

'“Ravished by Vikings”: The Pre-modern and the Paranormal in Viking Romance Fiction', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 5.2 (15 July 2016).

Keira Soleore reports back on the PCA/ACA conference

Laura Vivanco

Keira Soleore has posted summaries of papers presented on romance at the recent PCA/ACA conference:

The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association's national conference was on Tuesday, March 22 in Seattle. I attended five of the seven sessions in the Romance Area, which was chaired by Eric Selinger of DePaul University.

Keira's first post summarises

"Novel" Representations of Female Sexuality in Popular Fiction Across Cultures by Claire Watson

Aspirational Labor in the Creative Industries: Becoming a “Real” Romance Writer by Jen Lois

Analyzing Dan Savage's "Monogamish" Claim by Shaun Miller

Keira's second post summarises

Poldark As Anti-Antihero: Rebooting Romantic Masculinity for an Age of Crisis by Kyle Sclabach

All Around Great Guys, Mostly: The Evolving Romantic Hero in Literary Webseries by Margaret Selinger

Alpha, Beta, and the Ambiguous Omega: The Diversity of Heroes by Veera Mäkelä

Constructing Black Masculinities in Romance Fiction by Julie Moody-Freeman

Keira's third post summarises

"Lifting as We Climb": Iola LeRoy and the Early African-American Romance by Pamela Regis

Making It American: Epic Romance and the National Myth by Maryan Wherry

You Say Anal Like It's A Bad Thing by Meagan Gacke

Muslim Love American Style: Islamic-American Hybrid Culture and Romance in Muslim Fiction by Layla Abdullah-Poulos

Keira's fourth post summarises

Session Four, on Diversity in Historical Romance

and

Lady Catherine's Descendents: Examples of the Older Other Woman in Romance Fiction by Olivia Waite

A Short Inquiry into the Gothic Romance by Angela Toscano

Romance Academics at the RWA

Laura Vivanco

As usual, I wasn't at the conference but I read quite a lot of tweets and blog posts about it. One exchange of tweets related to the panel on:

Why Professors Love to Study Romance: The 10 Year Anniversary of RWA’s Academic Grant (SPECIAL)

Speakers: Conseula Francis, Joanna Gregson, Stacy Holden, Madeline Hunter, Jayashree Kamble, Jen Lois, Sarah Frantz Lyons, and Catherine Roach

At the ten-year anniversary of RWA’s Academic Research Grant program, a select panel of award winners will discuss how the grants have supported a wide range of projects that raise the profile of the genre and bring attention to the craft, values, and unique voices of romance writers. Attendees will learn what this particular group of scholar-readers finds interesting, challenging, and compelling about romance fiction.

Here's the exchange:

If an author asked me what they could do to support my research, I'd be very tempted to suggest that they go and read Jennifer Crusie's handout (also from the conference) on motif and metaphor, with the caveats that, obviously, the author doesn't have to act on my or Crusie's suggestion and also that this may not necessarily help other researchers. I do like a juicy motif/metaphor, though and what Crusie says makes it clear that what she's arguing for is not the imposition of extraneous metaphors just for their own sake, but the discovery of motifs and metaphors which are already

personal to your story. The metaphors that you choose, consciously or subconsciously, are part of its deeper meaning; they grow organically from the story you're telling. That's why it's best to find the metaphors already present in your text after your first draft, rather than superimposing a literary idea on it.

Since they're already in the text, romance scholars may find them anyway, without additional help from the author. But if working on them a little in the way Crusie suggests can make them clearer to us and enhance other readers' experience of a text (which is what Crusie suggests they'll do), then it seems like a not too onerous suggestion to make to authors.

If anyone can point me in the direction of more tweets or blog posts related to that panel, please let me know and I'll try to add links here.