Food for Thought: Romance Readers More Moral, a Philosophical Romance and more

Laura Vivanco

According to some new research on popular fiction

the more Romance [...] authors participants recognized, the fewer morally dubious [...] scenarios they believed permissible [...]. In fact, once Moral Purity concerns - a measure of the importance people place on purity or sanctity when making moral decisions - was controlled for, Romance was the only variable besides Science Fiction that was clearly related to Moral judgment.(22)

The authors do note that "the correlational nature of this study limits any causal inference: it could [...] be the case that when it comes to choosing novels, people pick stories that will enforce their existing beliefs and desires" (23) but perhaps

reading romance novels, in which clearly identified heroes and heroines achieve an "optimistic, emotionally satisfying" ending [...], may encourage readers to view the world in black and white terms. That romance novels tend to end with a "happily ever after" may be particularly relevant given prior research showing a relationship between fiction exposure and Just World beliefs. (24)

The paper by Jessica E. Black, Stephanie C. Capps and Jennifer L. Barnes can be found here. Please note, though that this is a pre-print version and the final version of "Fiction, Genre Exposure, and Moral Reality" may differ a little from the version in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

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Sydney E. Thorp, an Honours Philosophy student at Hamline University, has written their honours project in the form of a romance novella, complete with a central love story and happy ending. The protagonists do briefly discuss popular romance fiction, too: Eva, our philosopher heroine, comments

"You want another example of how women and romantic love are easily dismissed?" Ava asked, frustrated. "Two words: romance novels. Even though the romance novel industry is an enormous, billion-dollar-a-year industry, almost entirely dominated by women - female authors, editors, publishers, et cetera - no one takes romance novels seriously as a genre of fiction. And why? Most likely, because it is connected with women." (15)

 The story

follows two people as they try to determine what romantic love is, and why it was a neglected or minimized philosophical object for centuries. As the characters converse, they develop the concept of philosophy described above, discuss the place of women, passion, and reason in philosophy, and determine – to the extent they are able – that romantic love is something people do, rather than a feeling or state of being, and is based on an unjustifiable attraction to another person and Aristotle's concept of friendship, specifically philia.

The idea of romantic love being a practice, rather than an emotion or a state of being, seems to be uncommon in philosophical work on the topic. It seems just as rare, especially historically, to think of romantic love as being between equals, who mutually care for each other and commit equally to the relationship.

You can read the abstract and download the whole of Entangled: Romantic Love and Philosophy as a pdf from here.

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Still on the topic of love, Olivia Waite argues that, in romance novels, love isn't "a prize you earn for doing everything correctly" but, rather, "It would be far more accurate to say not that romance novel characters are looking to get love, but that love is looking to get them" and that, in terms of the plot and what the characters are hoping to achieve, "The real villain of any romance novel is love itself."

[Photo by Wolfgang Moroder and taken from Wikimedia Commons. It is not in the public domain.]


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What's food for love? Food! At least according to Jennifer Crusie, who argues that:

1) "The kind of food makes a difference because it characterizes the people eating it."

2) "food doesn’t just build romances, it builds all relationships."

3) "The person who controls the table, controls the interaction."

4) "food also says a lot about place."
 
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In the context of "place," another reminder that the next IASPR conference is all about place:

Space, place, and romantic love are intimately entwined. Popular culture depicts particular locations and environments as “romantic”; romantic fantasies can be “escapist” or involve the “boy / girl / beloved next door”; and romantic relationships play out in a complex mix of physical and virtual settings.

and

We’ve pushed the due date for IASPR conference proposals back by two weeks, to September 15, 2017. The conference will be in beautiful Sydney, Australia, just a 15 minute walk from the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge; it runs from June 27-29, 2018. The full CFP is here. Please feel free to repost and distribute it!

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Still on academic matters Amy Burge has written about the status of the "independent scholar" and I've been thinking about some gaps in the history of popular romance.

New to the Wiki: Islands in Romance, YA, NA, Crusie's Buildings, Military Romance, the British Empire.

Laura Vivanco

Crane, Ralph and Lisa Fletcher, 2016. 

“The Genre of Islands: Popular Fiction and Performative Geographies.” Island Studies Journal 11.2 (2016): 637-650.

Gillis, Bryan and Joanna Simpson, 2015. 

Sexual Content in Young Adult Literature: Reading between the Sheets (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield). [See Chapter 6 on "Sexual Content in Young Adult Romance".] Excerpt

 

Gleason, William, 2016. 

"The Inside Story: Jennifer Crusie and the Architecture of Love." Popular Fiction and Spatiality: Reading Genre Settings. Ed. Lisa Fletcher. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 79-93. Excerpt Abstract

Kitchen, Veronica, 2016. 

"Veterans and Military Masculinity in Popular Romance Fiction." Critical Military Studies. Abstract

Teo, Hsu-Ming, 2016. 

"Imperial Affairs: The British Empire and the Romantic Novel, 1890-1939", New Directions in Popular Fiction: Genre, Distribution, Reproduction, ed. Ken Gelder. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 87-110. Excerpt

 

Tienkamp, Aaf, 2016. 

"New Adult Romance: An Emerging Genre." Master’s Dissertation Literary Studies. Programme: Writing, Editing and Mediating, University of Groningen.

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.

Laura Vivanco

Romance III: Civic Engagements: Romance Communities, In and Outside the Text

“Have you forgotten how bad the gossips are around here?”: The Functions of Idle Chatter in Harlequin Medical Romance

(Jessica Miller, University of Maine)

Harlequin medical romance novels depict an emotional love story that develops within the social world of medicine. These novels focus on two morally good and professionally competent protagonists navigating a highly dramatic and intense romantic relationship. But much of the excitement and appeal of medical romance also derives from the “high stakes” health care setting, with its medical crises, organizational challenges, and contested workplace relationships. This presentation focuses on one particular feature located at the busy intersection of the social and individual aspects of the Harlequin medical romance: gossip.

Gossip is depicted in nearly every Harlequin medical romance under review (a selection of fifty novels published between 2010-2014). As in fiction more generally, gossip serves many functions in these novels: it drives plot, illuminates the norms of the social world, reveals character, and locates the protagonists relative to the social groups in which they find their identity. In terms of genre romance specifically, gossip has a crucial role to play in defining and creating the “flawed society” (in Pamela Regis’s formulation) of the romance, and in bringing that society to a changed and improved state by the end of the novel.

In general, the novels track the prohibition against gossip present in traditional moral codes. Gossip is likely to be trivial or false, and protagonists are much more likely to be fearful of gossip, threatened by gossip, or harmed by gossip than to engage in it, use it for their own ends, or benefit from it. However, this presentation will also consider an alternative approach to gossip found in the texts, informed by recent feminist theory, that gossip is an emotionally charged intertwining of attentive moral judgment and non-trivial information sharing, especially among oppressed groups.

(EMS note:  after the abstract was posted, Jessica contacted me with a new proposal focused on the representation of nursing In HMB medical romances, especially on the "virtue script" that shapes this representation, undercutting disourses of professionalism, etc.  A lot of work on this in other media, but not until now on medical romances.)

“The town has really nice blonde hair”: The Romance Plot and Civic Engagement in “Parks and Recreation”

(Wendy Wagner, Johnson & Wales University)

This paper situates the television comedy “Parks and Recreation” within the subgenre of the small-town romance in romance fiction, focusing on the love story of Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt. Specifically, the presence of this particular love story in the show differentiates “Parks and Recreation” from similar television shows about quirky small towns, such as “Northern Exposure.” Television critics have often referred to “Parks and Recreation” as a political allegory, but I want to argue that it is, in fact, a romance plot where the hero and heroine’s relationship is deeply entwined with the story about the town of Pawnee. I compare the Leslie/Ben plot to classic romance novels such as Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation and Courtney Milan’s The Suffragette Scandal, applying Pamela Regis’s eight elements of a romance novel to make this argument and calling attention to the relationship between romance and civic engagement in these texts. These romance plots are not just about finding love but also about remaking society, which Regis notes is a key element of the romance novel: “defining the society establishes the status quo which the heroine and hero must confront in their attempt to court and marry and which, by their union, they symbolically remake.” The inherent optimism of the romance novel, its foundational belief that love can ultimately change society, is in full display in “Parks and Recreation.”


Legitimating Romance: Neutralizing the Stigma of Romantic Fiction

(Joanna Gregson, Pacific Lutheran University, and Jen Lois, Western Washington University)

In April of 2010, we began a longitudinal sociological study of romance novel writers. By interviewing romance writers and other industry insiders, attending local and national RWA meetings, following writers on social media, and experimenting with writing romance ourselves, we are examining both the craft and the career of the romance writer. In so doing, we hope to explore how writers experience working in “the most popular, least respected literary genre” (Regis 2003: xi).

The present work examines how writer’s affiliation with the romance genre prompted outsiders to trivialize their work. We examine both the application and management of this stigma. First, we describe how outsiders applied the stigma, namely by suggesting that writing romance fiction is easy, that it is not “real” literature, and that it is not important. Although writers disagreed with these views, they nevertheless had to manage these negative perceptions. Writers attempted to neutralize the stigma by defending their writing process, contrasting the goals of literary and commercial fiction, demonstrating the impact of their work on readers, touting their financial success, and pointing out the sexism implicit in the stigma.
We conclude by distinguishing between the different stigma management techniques available to authors of different career statuses, and by highlighting the gendered and class-based biases informing the dominant cultural messages about the producers and audiences of romance fiction.

Blogging and Blackouts: Exploring Romance Readers’ and Authors’ Uses of Social Media

(Stephanie Moody, Kent State University)

In the wake of the October 2014 Blogging Blackout, new questions arise about the ethics and etiquette of romance fiction book blogging and reviewing. These questions are further complicated by the multiple and competing purposes romance readers and authors have for engaging with books and with each other online. My interviews with fifty romance readers, authors, editors, and publishers demonstrate that talking about books online – through blogs, reviews, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumbler – serves many, simultaneous purposes: as a marketing device, a creative outlet, a form of intimacy, a teaching tool, a process of reflection, and a political statement. Moreover, these purposes routinely change and shift, and are shaped by the web 2.0 medium in use.

In this presentation, I explore study participants’ talk about their purposes for using social media to discuss romance novels, and I suggest that notions of ethics and etiquette are largely shaped by individuals’ reasons for engaging with books and with others online. For instance, conceptualizing a book review as both a free source of marketing and as a way to, as one blogger put it, “c[o]me into being the person who I am now,” reveals how book blogging and reviewing collapse distinctions between public and personal writing. Likewise, characterizing the relationships between authors and readers within discourses of consumption, fandom, and intimacy demonstrates the slippery subjectivities evoked through such interactions. By attending to the literacy practices and talk that comprise individuals’ engagements with romance-related social media, I extend ongoing conversations about the perils and possibilities of book blogging and reviewing.

Laura Vivanco

Romance II: Dangerous Texts, Censorious Readers

‘mushy eyes over a quarter chicken at Nandos’: Love, gender, class and history in romantic advice texts for young people.

(Amy Burge, University of Edinburgh)

We are in the midst of a global ‘moral panic’ about young people, love and sex. The ‘pornification’ (McRobbie, 2008) of contemporary popular culture has led, it is argued, to the ‘adultification’ (APA 2010) of young people, in particular young women. Forced to choose between ‘raunch or romance’ (Bale 2011), modern young women are confronted with a plethora of advice texts that stipulate a narrow set of rules and behaviours that govern successful romantic discourse.

Responding to a call to consider questions of young people, love and sex from a hitherto neglected historical-situated perspective (Egan and Hawkes 2012), this paper compares relationship advice for young adults from the late Middle Ages and twenty-first century.

The specific focus of the paper is on representations of class and their collocation with romantic discourse. The late medieval conduct poem How The Good Wife Taught her Daughter (c.1350) emphasises a particular type of bourgeois feminine identity which is central to its romantic and social discourse: for late medieval women, class clearly matters. Yet, in her 2012 study Why love hurts, Eva Illouz argues that gender and class boundaries have disappeared from modern guides on love following a shift towards a focus on the self.

Is it really the case that class and gender boundaries have disappeared from modern romance advice? Or is it possible, through a comparison of historical and contemporary advice materials, to observe a continued intertwining of gender and class in romantic discourse? Employing close reading and critical discourse analysis, this paper considers the relationship between gender, class and romance, and proposes a deeper consideration of the historical structures underpinning romantic love today.


Romancing the Taboo: The Marriage Law Challenge in Snape/Hermione Fanfiction

(Amanda Allen, Eastern Michigan University)

In No Future, Lee Edelman suggests that our politics fetishize a “cult of the Child,” our symbolic future that must be protected at all costs. The Child thus represents our reproductive futurism, our drive to live into the future. This drive propels the canonical texts of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but it also emerges in the bodice-ripper-styled subset of Harry Potter fanon: Snape/Hermione fanfiction.

At the heart of SS/HG fanfiction is the recognition of the potential symbolic violence inherent in the taboo of the student/teacher relationship—a taboo that directly negates our drive to protect the child. While Rowling’s texts incorporate student Hermione (aged eleven to eighteen) and adult Snape (aged thirty-one to thirty-eight), many SS/HG writers appear uncomfortable with “shipping” characters of such differing ages and statuses. To protect the Child (Hermione), the majority of these writers attempt to normalize the power imbalance by changing the characters’ ages or time settings, incorporating authority figures (such as Dumbledore) to sanction the relationship, and legalizing sexual relations between Hermione and Snape under Ministry of Magic-approved laws.

This paper focuses on fics produced under the WIKTT (When I Kissed The Teacher mailing list) SS/HG “Marriage Law Challenge.” In these fics, the traditional “barrier” of popular romance—the reasons why the hero and heroine cannot marry (in this case, the student/teacher taboo)—is inverted, and becomes the reason why Snape and Hermione must marry; namely, to protect the Child. Yet this protection is doubled; while the marriage law fics use the institution of the Ministry of Magic to legitimize a taboo relationship, the overall purpose of the marriage law—to repopulate the Wizarding World—ensures that the fics remain fantasies of reproductive futurism. The Child is thus both sacrificed and saved by the romance narrative, thereby allowing the reader to celebrate the tabooed love between Snape and Hermione.


Anyone But Baby: Child-free Heroines, Heterosexual Romance, and Female Subjectivity in the Fiction of Jennifer Crusie and Emily Giffin

(Jessica Van Slooten, University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc)

As Myra Hird and Kimberly Abshoff conclude in their article "Women without Children: A Contradiction in Terms," “Feminism needs to be able to test its theories of women against the assumption that all women sexually reproduce. In other words, feminist theory needs to be able to authenticate childlessness as central to experiences of womanhood and femininity" (361). This theorization of child-free female subjectivity, while still nascent in feminist theory, is happening in practice—in women’s lives, and notably, in popular romance fiction. In Jennifer Crusie’s novels Anyone But You (1996) and Bet Me (2004) neither of the female protagonists want to have children. Rather than being a barrier to romantic fulfillment, this desire to live child-free strengthens the relationship between Nina and Alex, and Min and Cal, respectively. In these two novels. Crusie rejects the dominant culture narrative that romantic happiness necessitates a procreative future, and in doing so, theorizes a feminist female subjectivity that is not contingent upon bearing children.  In contrast, Emily Giffin’s novel Baby Proof (2007) suggests that motherhood is the price of maintaining true love, reinforcing theories that motherhood is central to adult womanhood and heterosexual marriage. Ultimately, the relationship between female subjectivity and motherhood is changing. According to the PEW Research Center, “nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s” (“Childlessness Up Among...”). American women are increasingly choosing child-free lives, and popular fiction reflects these trends. While Crusie boldy suggests that female subjectivity and adult heterosexual romance can flourish because of a desire for a child-free life, Giffin reaffirms the dominant cultural narrative that places parenthood at the center of heterosexual marriage.


Love and Healing: Explorations of the value and meaning of Love in contemporary cinema

(Phil Matthews, Bournemouth University)

This paper will look at several selected contemporary cinematic romance examples and discuss how they utilize the cinematic narrative devise of the character arc model to inform and impress meaning and value to notions of Love, and whether these definitions have wider currency beyond the cinematic romance genre. 'HEA' or even 'HFN' are arguably pervasive in the romance genre but is this the case in cinematic notions of genre, and how do cinematic genre conventions respond and engage with these arguably widely accepted literary principles not least posited by Regis (2003). A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn't want anything, who cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level. (McKee, 1998. Pg. 138.) This paper will explore and discuss screenwriting narrative mechanisms for change in cinematic characters principally utilising the character arc form, and how motivations and decisions communicate meaning to an audience. In this way meaning and value can arguably be attributed to whatever a character pursues. The pursuit of love within cinematic narratives thereby has an assigned value and it is how cinematic narratives negotiate and work with this value whether consistently or not which will be explored and investigated within this paper. 

Princeton Symposium Summarised

Laura Vivanco

Jackie C. Horne has summarised the keynote speeches (by Kay Mussell and Jennifer Crusie) and round-table discussion (the participant whose contribution is most noted is Eloisa James) at the The Popular Romance Author Symposium.

Attendees Sought: Princeton Symposium on Romance Authors

Laura Vivanco

The Princeton Symposium on "Authorship in the Popular Romance Genre" is being held on October 24th and 25th.

On Thursday 24th October from 5-7.30pm there will be keynote speeches from Jennifer Crusie and Kay Mussell and a roundtable discussion involving the two speakers plus Eloisa James/Mary Bly, An Goris, April Alliston and Pamela Regis. Registration starts at 4.30.

The Thursday keynotes and roundtable are free and open to the public. You can register here. This is a rare opportunity to hear Jenny Crusie because, as she says, "Travel is now dicey for me."

On Friday 25th October scholarly panels are scheduled from 9.30am-5.30pm. A fee will be charged for these panels but that also covers the cost of lunch:

• Early bird registration for the Friday panels = $20 (deadline October 1, 2013)

• After October 1, the registration fee for the Friday panels is $30

Register here. More details about the academic panels should be available in late September on the symposium website.

Online Romance Writing Program from McDaniel College

Posted on behalf of Professor Pamela Regis

McDaniel College is pleased to offer our Romance Writing Certificate program again this year. Professor Jennifer Crusie, MFA (Bet Me, Welcome to Temptation, etc.) teaches the program. Below is her description of it. Head over to ArghInk if you’d like to ask questions. Or email me, pregis AT mcdaniel DOT edu. I’m the go-to person for administrative help. Here’s Jenny: 

The 2013 McDaniel College Nora Roberts Romance Writing Program begins on August 12, and registration is open now. We’ve made a lot of changes since our first year, and a big thank you to the 2012 McD students who helped me figure out a better way to teach this, to Pam Regis who is the perfect administrator (patience of a saint), and to Nora Roberts, whose generosity makes this program possible. 
 

Here are some details about the program:

• The course is “wholly online, completely asynchronous,” which means you’ll never have to leave the house, and there is no set time you have to be online, although you do have to check in regularly.
• There are five eight-week classes in the program with two-week breaks in between each course. We’ve also added three optional eight-week workshops for a second year because of student interest.
• The first four courses are designed to give students the tools they need to make their novels better. Please note, that’s “tools” not “rules” and “better” not “conforming to a standard of perfection.” Each course gives the student the theory behind the subject of the course, the writing tools that have developed from the theories, and practice in using those tools.
• The fifth course is on publishing. We drink a lot during that one.
• The three second-year workshops are designed to provide the student with a framework and support group for finishing her novel.

Each course is divided into four two-week modules.

The assignments for each first year module are:

• an exercise or analysis to make the module concept clearer (Mod 1)
• a scene or synopsis or query letter (aka creative writing) (Mod 2)
• three critiques of fellow students’ work plus an exercise or analysis to make a concept clearer (Mod 3)
• the rewrite of the creative writing assignment from [Mod 2]; the publishing course adds a completed book proposal

The assignments for second year workshop modules are:

• an overview of the novel (plot plan, character arc plan, novel plan (Mod 1)
• a student-designed project based on a problem in the student’s novel (Mod 2 & 3)
• one third of the student’s novel finished in draft form (Mod 4)

In addition to the formal assignments, students are required to:

• Participate in the discussion forums (this has not been a problem for the 2012 students; the problem has been getting them out of the forums; turns out writers like to talk about writing)
• Write their goals for each module in online Learning Logs and then evaluate those goals at the end of the modules (along with any notes, insights, questions, etc., during the module; your online journal).
• Write ten pages/ 2500 words of new first draft on their novels each module (this is evaluated solely on quantity, not quality; the idea is to keep students writing new pages for their novels while they’re analyzing and rewriting their work in assignments).
• Read a lot throughout the first four classes: romance novels, writing textbooks (Robert McKee’s Story, Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction, Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers), internet posts and essays, and the Lecture PDFs I put up each module. There are also some videos to watch and some screenplays to read which usually leads to watching the films (Moonstruck and “A Scandal in Belgravia” in particular).

Other things you should know:

• Everything students do in this program is part of a process; none of these assignments is supposed to be finished work. You can’t fix a page until you HAVE a page, and since writing is re-writing (and re-writing and re-writing), it’s important not to waste time and energy worrying about how perfect the assignment is and focus instead on how to make it better each time. Because writers tend to despair when they look at their drafts, and despair is only amplified if somebody’s actually grading the suckers, I repeated, “It’s a process, just make it better each time” as a reminder so many times that the students voted to put “It’s a process” on the McD 2012 t-shirt.
• I am always, always, always late with the grading, but if a student asks a question on the Discussion boards or on the class blog, she’ll get a (probably long and detailed) answer within twenty-four hours. After five courses, I’m convinced that the real learning in this program takes place in the Discussion Forums and the group blog, but I’m going to make the students do the assignments anyway.
• I will answer questions about the program in the comments, but I’ve also invited the current students to come over and answer questions, too, since they’ll have a better perspective on the experience. I’ve told them to be brutally honest in their answers, but if you’d prefer, Jill at jillwquestions@gmail.com, Michille at michillecaples@comcast.net, Kathy at kate.deane@hotmail.com, and Jeannine at jec003@connections.mcdaniel.edu will also answer questions privately in e-mail.

Admin stuff:

Tuition is $450 per credit hour; courses are three credit hours. Registration is open now until July 31. The class is limited to fifteen students, and when it’s filled, that’s it because I am not effective with class sizes larger than that. The next opportunity to begin the program will be August 2014, although I don’t know if I’ll still be teaching the classes next year. Click here to apply: http://www.mcdaniel.edu/graduate/admissions/

ENG 232: Final Syllabus

After a lot of dithering (my usual way of thinking things through), I finally chose the books and topics for my popular romance course next quarter.  As you'll see, I'm sticking with the idea of building the course around Laura's book, and since I'm not going up for promotion this year, I hope to have the time to blog about how each segment goes.  I did, though, change the list of novels considerably.  It's not even remotely representative of the genre now--there's only one historical romance, for example, and that one isn't a Regency--but the books all do the three things they need to do:  fit the topics, help me with my research, and teach well, year after year.

Now to choose the books for course #2, the Love Seminar!  (Hint:  I think I'm going to take the easy way out, whatever that turns out to be....)  

Schedule Of Classes, Topics, And Readings

Topic 1:  What is a “Romance”?  A “Romance Novel”?  A “Popular Romance Novel”?

M:  Introduction to the Class and to each other.  Introduction to “romance,” the “romance novel,” the “popular romance novel” and the “Harlequin Romance” as critical and historical categories.

W:    Vivanco, Introduction and Chapter 1 (“Mimetic Modes”) of For Love and Money

M:  Unsung Hero:  chapters 1-10 (feel free to read ahead)

W:  Unsung Hero:  the rest of it!

Topic 2:  Twice-Told Tales: Romance, Myth, and Fairy Tale

M:  Vivanco, Chapter 2 (“Mythoi”)

W:    Bet Me 

M:  Bet Me

Topic 3:  My Metafictional Romance

W:  Vivanco, Chapter 3 (“Metafiction”)

M:  Natural Born Charmer

W:  Natural Born Charmer

Topic 4:  My Metaphorical Romance

M:  Vivanco, Chapter 4 (“Metaphors”) and Conclusion

W:  Homecoming

M:  Homecoming

Topic 5:  Lore, Deportment, and Problem Fiction: Thinking in Romance

W:  Thomas Roberts, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction, chapter 7 (“Thinking with Tired Brains”) and chapter 8 (“Reading in a System”); Catherine Roach, “Getting a Good Man to Love:  Romance Fiction and the Problem of Patriarchy."

M:  False Colors 

W:  False Colors

M:  False Colors

Topic 6:  (Psst!  Isn’t It Really Just “Porn for Women”?)

W:  Ann Barr Snitow, “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different”; assorted readings on Fifty Shades of Grey (to be chosen later)

M:   Start Me Up

W:  Start Me Up

Update: Non-Credit Option for McDaniel Romance Writing Courses

Pamela Regis

This additional path to these courses was created, in part, in answer to a number of inquires from international students who were finding the credentials authentication process lengthy and cumbersome, and who did not really care if they got credit.  They just wanted to take the courses. 

Here's the update:

********************

We've added a non-credit option for the McDaniel College romance writing courses which begin on August 27. 

From the McDaniel website:

Not interested in receiving graduate credit?
A noncredit version of the program is available for those not wishing to pursue graduate credit.  The noncredit version of the program offers students the exact same program, experience and interaction as the credit version of the program.  Download the noncredit registration form.  Please carefully follow the instructions on the form regarding registration and payment for the noncredit option. Noncredit registration forms can be e-mailed to Ms. Penny Pfeiffer at ppfeiffer@mcdaniel.edu or faxed to 410-857-2515 (attn:  Penny Pfeiffer).

To enroll as a non-credit student you do not need a bachelor's degree, and international students interested in the program do not need to undertake the authentication of their credentials required of degree-seeking, for-credit students.  

The courses are online and asynchronous--you can attend class at any time, 24/7, from anyplace in the world that has an internet connection. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie will be teaching the writing courses. She and I will co-teach the first course, Reading the Romance, a craft-driven analysis of the writing technique in ten novels, designed to sharpen your tools for the work in the writing courses that follow.  

Full information here.

I welcome questions about the registration process or about the courses themselves.

Online Romance Writing Courses from McDaniel College

Pamela Regis

McDaniel College is fielding a new five-course sequence in Romance Writing, to begin this fall. Each course lasts eight weeks, and is online, asynchronous (anyone, anywhere with an internet connection can do course work at any time), focused on romance writing, and taught by Jennifer Cruise, MFA, New York Times best selling author. The program is the first of its kind.

These graduate-level courses are for new and experienced writers who have a bachelor’s degree.

The five courses lead students through an examination of the craft of romance writing—with a focus on character as it informs and builds story. Students develop a proposal—a synopsis, 30 polished pages, and a query letter—for an original, novel-length romance.

The first course, Reading the Romance (3 credit hours), guides you through an analysis of the craft elements in novels by respected romance writers:

Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Heaven, Texas. 1995.
Nora Roberts. Montana Sky. 1996.
Loretta Chase. Lord of Scoundrels. 1995.
Beverly Jenkins. Indigo. 1996.
Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich. Dogs and Goddesses. 2009.
Melissa Marr. Wicked Lovely. 2007.
Patricia Gaffney. The Saving Graces. 1999.
Barbara O’Neal. How to Bake a Perfect Life. 2010.

Your guides to craft will be Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer, and Robert McKee, Story, as well as Jennifer Crusie and/or Pam Regis, who will occasionally teach the first course.

It begins on August 27. Register beginning July 1 but before July 28.

In the next four courses (each 3 credits), Jennifer Crusie provides one-on-one feedback:

In…	…you will focus on writing
Writing the Romance Novel I	character
Writing the Romance Novel II	structure
Romance Writing Workshop	revision
Publishing	the proposal package

Development costs were funded by a generous gift by the Nora Roberts Foundation.

Credit hours transfer into a McDaniel Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) degree. Cost: $1,290 per course.

Learn more details

For those of you who have heard of Jennifer Crusie's involvement with The Writewell Academy and are wondering if there's a difference between the courses on offer there and at McDaniel College, we explain the Writewell/McDaniel relationship in this way:

Although the information from Writewell will be part of the McDaniel program, it will not be in the same form. Writewell is baseline level introduction to creative writing, consisting of just the lectures and support materials. Writewell's creators don't read anybody's work for Writewell. McDaniel's program is a full blown, hands on creative writing program, workshops, critiques, etc. Professor Crusie does read and offer critique. She says, "It's the difference between a really good bicycle and a Mercedes."

JPRS 2.2: Special Forum on Jennifer Crusie

Laura Vivanco

As Eric writes, "This feature was first imagined, many years ago, as a book of critical essays, to be edited by Laura Vivanco and myself." We sent out the first call for papers in July 2006 and a subsequent one, for additional papers, in January 2008. In the end, we never did get enough essays to fill a whole volume. Perhaps it was all for the best; now these six essays (and a detailed introduction) are freely available to everyone with an internet connection.

"Nothing But Good Times Ahead" -  an introduction, by Eric Selinger

I would not be editor of this journal—in fact, the journal itself might not exist—had I not encountered Crusie’s novels and essays in the early 2000s.  They made me want to be a romance scholar, and since 2006, when I began to teach courses on popular romance, a novel and / or essay by Crusie has appeared on every one of my twenty-plus syllabi. [...]  To hear Crusie’s characters debate the nature of stories or watch them read the material world around them, from clothing to china to paintings to home decor, is to learn how to read, better and deeper, in the broadest sense of the verb.

"Jennifer Crusie's Literary Lingerie" - by Laura Vivanco

in Crusie’s fiction even the flimsiest piece of lingerie can be “heavy with meaning” (“Romancing” 86). This meaning is only partially encoded in the fabrics, styles and colours chosen: it is also dependent on the context in which a particular item is worn or discarded. In one situation, therefore, lingerie can function as an instrument of patriarchal oppression while in another it may serve as a weapon in the feminist struggle; it can be used to signal sexual interest and boost a woman’s confidence but may also reinforce her feelings of inadequacy about her body; it can cause her physical discomfort or give sensual pleasure; although it can indicate a lack of openness and truth, female intimacy is promoted as women discuss their lingerie and via such discussions give each other emotional support that complements the physical uplift of underwiring and padding. Crusie’s literary lingerie reflects the complexity of women’s relationships with their bodies, their desires, their sexual partners and their friends.

"Crusie and the Con" - by Christina A. Valeo

My consideration of the con in Crusie’s work, and my argument that the exchange between romance writer and romance reader itself resembles a con, focuses on the agency of the reader in the exchange, on her willing participation in this literary shell game. If we extend the conversation beyond the moral debate, the author’s intent, or the text’s effect, we can consider more completely the reader’s role in constructing the meaning and negotiating the impact of the text.

"Tell Me Lies: Lying, Storytelling and the Romance Novel as Feminist Fiction" - by Patricia Zakreski

In discussions concerning lying, many contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists agree that different cultures, and even individuals within the same culture, have varying ideas about what does and does not count as a lie. Opinion over the social impact of lying is also divided. Whether seen as immoral and self-serving or as a necessary social skill, lying is a difficult concept to define. Crusie, however, offers her own definition in The Cinderella Deal that highlights the transformative potential of fictions of romance. While Linc thinks that telling the faculty at Prescott that he is engaged is a lie, Daisy offers a different perspective [...]. Daisy’s idea of a lie is something that attempts to alter the facts of the past, while a story presents a vision of a desired present and future—something Linc wants rather than something he’s done. Presenting a version of reality as he would like it to be is therefore not a lie, but is instead a possible preview of coming truths, a story he created, which, though fictional, can be made real.

"Getting Laid, Getting Old, and Getting Fed: The Cultural Resistance of Jennifer Crusie's Romance Heroines" - by Kyra Kramer

One of the ways in which Crusie contests “a lot of the ‘truths’ that the different societal ideologies have foisted on” her heroines is through her depiction of their bodies. In several of her novels, her heroines find a satisfying romance in spite of the fact they transgress in some way the modern cultural conceptualisation of what is a “desirable” or “beautiful” woman, thereby contesting the cultural ideal of “feminine beauty.” Although there are several other areas in which the bodies of her heroines are consistent with culturally ascribed definition of what is normal or what is beautiful—in that they are white, middle-class heroines who are not transgendered, homosexual, disabled, or disfigured, among other variables—there is at least an attempt by Crusie to stretch the narrow definition of what kind of woman is ‘allowed’ to live happily ever after within the cultural narrative.

"The Heroine as Reader, the Reader as Heroine: Jennifer Crusie's Welcome to Temptation" - by Kate Moore and Eric Selinger

Crusie does not deny that individuals can confuse fantasy and reality, but rather suggests that confusion about boundaries between the two realms is not specific to women or to one form of fantasy, the romance, but rather arises in the vanity and egocentrism of the person experiencing the fantasy. To make her case, Crusie opens the novel by locating her heroine’s imaginative experience as a reader and writer in the larger context of accepted imaginative experience in American popular culture. She then juxtaposes her heroine’s fantasy experience against the experiences of a cast of secondary characters, both male and female, whose participation in popularly accepted forms of fantasy, those not subject to critical derision for association with women, leads them into moral error.

"Gossip, Liminality, and Erotic Display: Jennifer Crusie's Links to Eighteenth-Century Amatory Fiction" - by Kimberly Baldus

Tell Me Lies and the novels that followed in the next two years, Crazy for You and Welcome to Temptation, increasingly linger on moments where eroticism develops in the liminal space between private intimacy and public exposure. Crusie constructs scenes where her female characters explore the liberating possibilities of turning their private sexual encounters into public spectacles, offering themselves as objects of a voyeuristic gaze which readers are invited to share. [...] In the links she develops between liminality, gossip and erotic display, Crusie’s modern romance draws upon territory first developed in the genre of the novel designated as “amatory fiction” (Ballaster). These texts, appearing in the early eighteenth century in England, played a crucial role in shaping the emerging genre of the novel. [...] The notion of the liminal as a realm that inspires creativity and invites new possibilities underpins a model of authorship that playfully invites readers to participate in the communal act of making meaning from the textual details of their novels.

Various Links

Laura Vivanco

Jessica from Read React Review will be teaching Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me as part of her Ethics and Fiction course:

I decided I wanted to do two things in this unit: (1) ask whether genre fiction is as worthy a subject of ethical criticism as literary fiction (Wayne Booth explicitly says no, and most other ethical critics implicitly reject this possibility), and (2) introduce feminist critique as a mode of ethical critique. I also wanted something fun, since pretty much everything else I assigned is a real downer. I think Bet Me is a fun book that can work in all of those ways.

Sarah Frantz was interviewed by Heidi Cullinan and mentioned that

I’ve got an academic anthology I edited coming out next year: New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction. My article in there talks about Joey Hill’s BDSM romance, Holding the Cards. I’m ALSO in the (very slow) process of writing a book called ALPHA MALE: POWER AND MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN POPULAR ROMANCE FICTION. I’ll have a chapter in there about m/m romance.

Linda Hilton has posted about her Honours thesis (from 2000) and mentions that

I was able to read one romance novel after another and see where the woman’s voice had been silenced, her power neutralized, her body appropriated, her desires perverted --- BUT, I could also see where the woman’s power and autonomy had been left intact, where she had submitted only because she had no choice and because it was the way to maintain what little autonomy was granted to her.

On a related note, DM guestblogged at Dear Author about the "Defeated Heroine." She

used to dismiss Radway and her work as elitist and blinkered, but after a recent glom of Madeline Hunter’s Regencies, and Lara Adrian’s Breed books (Adrian’s series title kinda says it all…) I started to feel uncomfortable. There seemed to be a message in these books, conscious or unconscious on the part of the authors, that supported Radway’s conclusions.

Sunita wrote a post about "Jewish stereotypes in Georgette Heyer’s novels." She notes with regards to The Grand Sophy that

The Sourcebooks version changes Heyer’s original wording from

The instinct of his race made him prefer, whenever possible, to maintain a manner of the utmost urbanity,

to

His instinct made him prefer, whenever possible, to maintain a manner of the utmost urbanity,

But editors can’t do much about the name, and they keep the stereotypical descriptors, e.g., “greasy” and “ingratiating,” not to mention the “Semitic nose.”

Apart from the importance of analysing the depiction of race in romances, this post also reminded me that one can't assume that the text of a second or subsequent edition of a romance is identical to that of the original. I don't know if Sourcebooks indicate that their edition differs from the original but I've certainly come across examples of romances in which changes have been made to a subsequent edition and there is no way a reader would know this unless she/he compared the two editions.

Given the popularity of romances about SEALs, I thought I'd mention that

WAR-Net was founded in 2010 by Kate McLoughlin and Gill Plain as a virtual and actual forum for scholars based in northern England and Scotland working on war representation. It now welcomes members from all over the UK and the rest of the world.

Next WAR-Net Meeting: 'Battle-Lines: War and Conflict in Popular Texts and Images' on 1 October 2011 at the University of Dundee.

Romance novels sell well in the Philippines:

written in street-level Tagalog, the books emerged in the early 1980s when an economic crisis forced the importers of western "chick literature" paperbacks to seek out alternatives. [...]

Romance author Maia Jose, who began writing in 1990, said the genre centred on the build-up of a romantic relationship that must end either in marriage or in a commitment.

"The book must be 128 pages long and it's a formula, so it must have a happy ending. If it doesn't have a happy ending the reader would be offended," the mother-of-three said.

The authors typically do not have any formal writing background, with housewives, students and moonlighting accountants among a mixed bag of storytellers.

Jose said she generally took between two and four weeks to write a book, while one particularly prolific writer once churned out nearly 100 in a year. (AFP, via The Independent)

Change We Need

Laura Vivanco

Change is key to the development of a romance. You can't have a romance without a "Central Love Story," that love story "centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work" (RWA), and so, by definition, the relationship changes over the course of the novel. That kind of change, to borrow one of President Obama's campaign slogans, is the "Change We Need."

That may not, however, be the only kind of change some readers need. When SmartBitch Sarah recently gave Georgette Heyer's The Grand Sophy a "D" grade I wasn't at all surprised that this was partly due to the anti-Semitic portrayal of Goldhanger, the Jewish moneylender. We have, after all, discussed that before here at TMT. I was, however, surprised by the following criticism of the novel:

Sophy doesn’t change or grow or evolve. She gets her way, and everyone around her is probably better off for her involvement, and they’re all happy, but Sophy doesn’t develop. She achieves through her own machinations, which, while entertaining, was not as satisfying as having her develop or grow as a character.

Although I had noticed that, in many romances, both the hero and heroine are greatly altered by the end of the novel, it had never occurred to me that change in the protagonists was necessary to any readers' enjoyment of romances. With this revelation still in the back of my mind, I came across the following:

When our immigrant ancestors arrived on America's shores they hit the ground running, some to homestead on the Great Plains, others to claw their way up the socio-economic ladder in coastal ghettos. Upward mobility, westward migration, Sunbelt relocation - the wisdom in America is that people don't, can't, mustn't end up where they begin. This belief has the moral force of religious doctrine. Thus the American identity is ordered around the psychological experience of forsaking or losing the past for the opportunity of reinventing oneself in the future. (Engle 337)

While there are likely to be plenty of non-American readers who have a preference for protagonists who change a lot, I wonder if the romance genre, as it has developed in North America, does tend to reflect the belief "that people don't, can't, mustn't end up where they begin."

Virginia Kantra, for example, states that

At the center of every story is a protagonist who wants to do, accomplish or change...something. In pursuit of his goals, our protagonist must struggle, learn and grow to become a more self-realized, self-reliant, autonomous character. This is the character arc.

But as readers and writers of romance, we expect, we celebrate, the development of the pair bond from attraction through exploration to emotional intimacy and sex. This is the romance arc. [...]

As romance writers, our job is to develop all three arcs, the hero's, the heroine's, and the relationship's, in an emotionally satisfying way.

Jennifer Crusie found the genre powerful and important because it

gave me female protagonists in stories that promised that if a woman fought for what she believed in and searched for the truth, she could strip away the old lies about her life and emerge re-born, transformed with that new sense of self that’s the prize at the end of any quest. And when the heroine emerges transformed from the romance story, so do I. So do all romance readers.

Leslie Wainger, author of Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies and Harlequin editor believes that

Static characters are boring: Your heroine (and yes, your hero, too) can't remain static over the course of the book. As the plot progresses, you need to make your heroine develop, change, grow, and discover things about herself and her abilities — especially how to love and live with her hero. If your heroine starts out perfect, she has nowhere to go. But if she has insecurities, past failures to put to rest, doubts about herself and her abilities, or an out-and-out bad habit — maybe a quick temper, or impatience that leads to rash, unwise decisions — she has room for progress, and readers will want to see how she masters the challenges of the plot and the romantic relationship.

I'm still not convinced, though. If the characters are intrinsically interesting, why do they need to change? Isn't it enough to see how their relationship develops? In Heyer's The Nonesuch, for example, neither the heroine nor the hero become "more self-realized, self-reliant." They don't change their personalities; what changes is how they feel about each other. And, as Sunita recently said,

For readers who enjoy context and setting, this novel has a lot to offer. There isn’t much in the way of plot: Ancilla and Sir Waldo slowly fall in love; Linden’s initial adoration of Tiffany dissipates and he moves on to a deep, long-lasting love for a more appropriate object of his affection; and Tiffany eventually gets her comeuppance, in a way that engenders some sympathy from the reader.

One of my favourite romances (as I've said many times) is Austen's Persuasion in which, when Captain Wentworth observes that

"You were not formerly, I know. You did not use to like cards; but time makes many changes."
"I am not yet so much changed," cried Anne, and stopped, fearing she hardly knew what misconstruction. After waiting a few moments he said - and as if it were the result of immediate feeling - "It is a period, indeed! Eight years and a half is a period!" (Chapter 22)

The years have made Anne more confident in her own judgments but in the essentials of their personalities, she and Wentworth remain basically unchanged:

they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their reunion, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting. (Chapter 23)

The changes in their circumstances which make it possible for them to marry are more than enough change for me, and what change there has been in their personalities is the sort of gradual change I can believe in.

What kind(s) of change do you need in a romance and what makes it change you can believe in?

• Austen, Jane. Persuasion. The Republic of Pemberley.
• Crusie, Jennifer. "Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women."
  
• Engle, Gary. "What Makes Superman So Darned American?" Popular Culture: An Introductory Text. Ed. Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1992. 331-343.
• Kantra, Virginia. "Who's on Top?: Intimacy, Control, and Conflict."
• Romance Writers of America. "About the Romance Genre."
• Sunita. "Review: The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer."
  
• Wainger, Leslie. "Discovering the Key to Every Romance Novel: The Heroine."
• Wendell, Sarah. "The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer."

The first photo, of "Change We Need" was taken by snowmentality and downloaded from Flickr under a Creative Commons licence. The second image, of "Change We Can Believe In," came from Wikimedia Commons.

The Romance Genre and the American Dream

Laura Vivanco

I've been doing a bit of background reading on the American Dream (if anyone has any books or articles they'd recommend, I'd be very grateful, particularly if they discuss the Dream in the context of popular culture) and came across this:

From its beginnings through the early twentieth century [...] the American success myth has been orchestrated around five basic beliefs which have served as recurring motifs: 1) American democracy allows its citizens to rise above any limitations into which they may have been born; 2) hard work brings riches and physical comforts; 3) these rewards come to those who are deserving of them (virtuous) and who 4) have the drive and ambition to attain them plus 5) a modicum of good luck. (Marsden 144)

It struck me that if you put 1), 2) and 3) together in the context of romance, you're likely to find heroines who are hardworking, virtuous and of a relatively lowly social status who "marry up," and have no difficulty fitting into the lifestyle of their vampire/prince/billionaire/sheikh. I also notice that Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy fit this pattern rather well.

The Romance Writers of America's definition of the romance genre states that "In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love." This definition had always puzzled me a little, because if the love is "unconditional" why is it only being given out on condition that the lovers "risk and struggle for each other and their relationship"? I wonder if I need to approach this definition in the context of 2), 3) and 4). Certainly Jennifer Crusie, who helped draft the definition, has written that

My feeling on this, which I have expressed loudly and often, is that the romance novel is based on the idea of an innate emotional justice in the universe, that the way the world works is that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished.

So it would definitely seem that the concept of "emotional justice" is derived from belief 3), that "rewards come to those who are deserving of them (virtuous)."

Number 5) of course, is not needed by those who are "fated mates" but even then, isn't it a question of luck (or fate) as to whether one has a "fated mate"?

---

• Marsden, Madonna. "The American Myth of Success: Visions and Revisions." Popular Culture: An Introductory Text. Ed. Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause. Madison, Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1992. 134-48. [Excerpt.]
  

Romance in The Cambridge History of the American Novel

Laura Vivanco

I'm very happy to be able to announce that there's an essay by Teach Me Tonight's Pamela Regis in The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011). Leonard Cassuto, one of the editors of the volume, observes that

The Cambridge History of the American Novel pays more attention to genre fiction than previous histories of American literature, and it accords them the importance they deserve in the shaping of literary fiction and the history of the American novel generally. If all literary histories ask, “What is ‘literature’?” then this volume argues that the study of popular genres alongside more self-consciously literary productions will help us to answer that question.

The rise of genre fiction is a story that begins early. Eclipsed genres like the sea novel helped to shape books that we read today as literature [...]. And later genres such as the crime novel or science fiction, which flowered in the twentieth century, have cross-pollinated with so-called literary fiction and inspired novelists from Hemingway to Marge Piercy. We have also seen notable entries from within a genre take their places on the high cultural podium.

The critical study of genre fiction begins somewhat later, as it took awhile for scholars to acknowledge the importance of formula-driven fiction as art, or as a source of literary influence and cultural insight. This history devotes chapters to “strong genres”– so called because they register with particular clarity the collectively held beliefs, hopes, and anxieties of the context in which they are produced. (10)

One of those "strong genres" is romance, which Pam examines in a chapter titled ""Female genre fiction in the twentieth century." In it Pam offers the reader "a definition of the romance novel, some categories to advance its literary analysis, and a first effort to place it in literary history, especially in foundational relation to the sentimental literature of the nineteenth century" (848). She includes short analyses of a number of American romances: E.D.E.N. Southworth's Vivia; or The Secret of Power (1857); Kathleen Thompson Norris' Rose of the World (1923); Faith Baldwin's Week-End Marriage (1931); Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt (1952); Kathleen E. Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower (1972); Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me (2004); Beverly Jenkins' Indigo (1996); Ann Herendeen's Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2005); and Nora Roberts' Irish Thoroughbred (1981).
----

• Cassuto, Leonard. "General introduction." The Cambridge History of the American Novel. Ed. Leonard Cassuto, Clare Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 1-14.
  
• Regis, Pamela. "Female genre fiction in the twentieth century." The Cambridge History of the American Novel. Ed. Leonard Cassuto, Clare Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 847-60.

Paper Topics, part 1

Eric here!

I'm currently teaching an upper-division (advanced undergraduate) course on popular romance fiction at DePaul: my 20th course on the genre, or something like that. We're reading a half-dozen novels over the quarter, loosely grouped under three broad topics: "Romance and Patriarchy," "Romance and Religion," and "Romance and Aesthetics." The novels, in order, are:

Jennifer Crusie, Welcome to Temptation
Victoria Dahl, Talk Me Down
Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love
Alex Beecroft, False Colors
Ann Herendeen, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander
Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Natural Born Charmer

I've taught all of these before, except for the Rivers--which was, I should say, a huge hit in the classroom, teaching extremely well in conjunction with Lynn Neal's book Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction and with Catherine Roach's essay, "Getting a Good Man to Love," published in the first issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

I thought it might be interesting for those of you not taking the class to see the sorts of paper topics my students have to grapple with.

In my next post, I'll give you the topics for paper #2, which focused on Rivers, Beecroft, or Herendeen. The first set of paper topics were focused on our first pair of novels--the Crusie and the Dahl. The paper was to be 6-8 pages long, double-spaced, in 11 or 12 point type, "with a clear line of argument throughout" (heh). Here are the options I offered:

1. As we discussed in class, Jennifer Crusie’s novel Welcome to Temptation can be read as a response to claims by first-generation romance scholars about the romance genre. Ideas from Janice Radway, in particular, seem to appear in the narrative; it may be that ideas from other early critics, like Tania Modleski and Ann Barr Snitow, can be seen there as well. Write an essay on Welcome to Temptation as a response to one or more of these critics. Does it offer a counter-theory of its own, perhaps connected to Crusie’s own ideas about the genre? Be sure to draw on specific passages from both the primary and secondary texts to make your case.

2. Starting in the the late 1990s, Jennifer Crusie set about defending the romance genre in a variety of academic and popular venues. Read the essays on the genre gathered on her website, and write an essay on Welcome to Temptation that shows how this novel illustrates (or does not illustrate, in some interesting way) this romance author’s theory of her genre, both as art and as feminist practice.

3. As we noticed in class discussion, Welcome to Temptation is a pervasively allusive and citational text. Crusie’s characters (and perhaps her narrator as well) quote from, mention, or echo movies, Dusty Springfield songs, and other material from popular culture; the novel also echoes or invokes canonical texts, including the Bible and, arguably, such 19th-century authors of American “romance” as Hawthorne and Poe. For your paper, please choose one of these sets of allusions and explore its importance to and implications for our reading the novel. OR, if you prefer, write an essay on what this pervasive citational quality suggests about the ideas that this novel embodies about romance fiction, romance reading, and / or romantic love.

4. In her essay, “Getting a Good Man to Love: Popular Romance Fiction and the Problem of Patriarchy,” Catherine Roach discusses popular romance novels as, among other things, the promulgators of “erotic faith.” With her essay in mind, consider the dialogue with Christianity that we found in Welcome to Temptation, particularly the novel’s revisions of such topoi as temptation, the fall, the devil, knowledge (of good and evil, or of something else). Don’t forget the characters’ names! What exactly is the theology of this novel of “erotic faith”? How does it compare to or contrast with the ideas articulated by Roach?

5. In our early discussions of Wendell and Tan's Beyond Heaving Bosoms, many of you were interested in the recurring hero and heroine character types to be found in popular romance fiction. Choosing either Welcome to Temptation or Talk Me Down—or, if you prefer, working by comparison and contrast—discuss how Crusie and / or Dahl work with these conventions to construct either the romance hero or the romance heroine. Feel free to think about how the male or female lead of the novel is set off by contrasting characters; for example, how might Molly and Brenda compare to the heroine / villainess pairs found in “old-school” romance novels, in the BHB description?

6. As we discussed in class, both Welcome to Temptation and Talk Me Down can be read as metafiction: romance novels about popular romance fiction, its readers, its effects on readers, and its reputation. What, though, does this reading illuminate in each novel, either as idea or as artistry? How can we use this approach to make each novel as interesting as possible? Choose one novel and read it through this lens; or, if you prefer, compare and contrast the novels as metafiction, with an eye to their differences at the levels of idea and / or artistry.

7. As we discussed in class, both Welcome to Temptation and Talk Me Down are concerned with the shifting, complex relationships between the world of our desires—fantasy, fiction, hope, romance—and the world of “reality,” which is often (though perhaps not always) a grimmer, more frightening, more frustrating, more disappointing place. Several scholars and defenders of the genre, including Tania Modleski, Janice Radway, and Catherine Roach, have discussed it in terms of “wish-fulfillment,” a “reparation fantasy,” a “safe space” in which anxieties and ambivalent feelings can be assuaged or healed; others, including Jennifer Crusie, have insisted that “romance fiction is reality fiction.” Choose one of the two novels and trace the evolving relationships between fantasy and reality in the book, with an eye to how these may shift from the start of the novel to the end. If you wish, you may try to extrapolate a theory about the genre more generally from your text; however, you do not need to do so.

8. Some of our most interesting discussions so far have circled back to the enduring debate over what it might mean to talk about romance fiction as “porn for women”: a debate that is re-opened rather explicitly (no pun intended) by each of our first two novels. Drawing on Snitow’s original essay, on Berlant and Warner’s essay “Sex in Public,” on contemporary debates about porn culture, “sex-positive feminism,” and feminist porn (did you know there are “Feminist Porn Awards”), write an essay on one or both of our first two novels. What do Crusie and / or Dahl suggest about the status of popular romance fiction as “porn for women,” or about what is at stake in the debate itself? How might ideas from outside the romance / romance scholarship community (i.e., the discussions of heteronormativity in Berlant or others) illuminate the explorations and the “policing” of female desire and sexuality in one or both of these novels?

9. E-Curious variation: using the same texts and topics, compare and contrast Dahl’s Talk Me Down, published in print by HQN, with The Wicked West, published only in ebook form and written at a double remove (by Dahl as Molly as Holly). How do the explorations and limitations differ when Dahl steps into the (perhaps) more open genre of “erotic romance” and into the (perhaps) more open arena of electronic publishing? How do the texts differ in their negotiations with heteronormativity?

10. Having read two romance novels, several of you wanted to discuss the differences that you saw between Crusie and Dahl in terms of literary complexity, writing style, “fun,” and other aesthetic categories. For this essay, use your subjective response to these contrasting authors to explore their contrasting aesthetics. Rather than rank the novels against some ostensibly neutral or objective rubric—good writing does X; good books do Y; good authors don’t (but I do)—try to identify the contrasting goals or projects of the two texts, and describe the way each author’s style and / or structure helps her achieve that goal. (For example, if you notice one or both of these authors using stock language or trying to provoke stock responses in the reader, don’t assume that these are always bad things, as creative writing workshop leaders often suggest. Rather, think about how and why each author might deploy them, in the particular context, and what that might tell us about the text.)

11. One of the topics that quite interested a few of you in the first few days of class was the Smart Bitches’ account of the sexual education—and miseducation—provided by popular romance novels. Each of the novels we have read so far might be read as a didactic text, one that aims to correct earlier romance pedagogy and teach its own sexual curriculum. Looking closely at one or both of our novels, what exactly does this didactic project look like in practice? What corrections to previous romance tropes do we find? What lessons are taught, either explicitly or implicitly? Given the themes of the novel, why might we see precisely these scenes of instruction, in this order? Feel free to move from this specifically sexual topic into a broader consideration of the novel (or novels) as didactic art. What else does the text seem bent on teaching its readers, and how is that lesson conveyed?