Dissertation Season (and some other new publications)

Lucynka Starron has found an article from 1934 giving advice to would-be romance authors targetting the romance pulps.

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Balle, Mary, Danny Valdez, and Tori Sciara. 2026. “Adeline’s Desire: Conversation between Paranoid and Reparative Readings of Eroticism, Relationships, and Sexual Behaviours in the Dark Romance Haunting Adeline.” Porn Studies. [Abstract here.] 

 

Brenner, Naomi (2025). "Sabine vs. Aviva: Translation and Popular Fiction in Yiddish and Hebrew." Yod 25.

 

Burmeister, Aurora Grace (2026). Where Love and Obsession Overlap: An Examination of Dark Romance, BookTok, and Moral Outrage. Master of Arts, Bowling Green State University.

 

Burge, Amy (2026). "A Decolonised Alpha Hero? Negotiating Masculinities in Nigerian Romance Novels."  Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

 

Eskelsen, Ilse (2026). “I Know He Would Do Anything if I Asked”: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Female Power Fantasy, and the YA Romance. Undergraduate Dissertation, Brigham Young University.

 

Hildebrandt, Addie. (2026). "The Ripped Bodice, Brooklyn." World Literature Today 100.3: 80. [Excerpt here.] 

 

Horan, Molly (2026). “Thanks For Listening: A Novel” And “Asexuality in Young Adult Literature: How Ace/Aro YA Challenges Amatonormativity and Expands Possibilities.” PhD, Bath Spa University. 

 

Lu, Jie (2026). "Chinese Online Fiction: A New Romantic Imagination." The International Journal of Literary Humanities 24.1: 35-58. 

 

Montejo, Aurora (2026). "Guilty Pleasure or Attack on Feminism?: An Analysis of the Dark Romance Subgenre." The Odyssey: Undergraduate Arts & Humanities Academic Journal 1: 7-18.

 

Niebergall, Chelsee M. (2026). Resistance and Innovation: The Cultural Work of Popular Romance Novels. Master's Thesis, Dartmouth College.

Noriega Palmero, Jessica Alejandra. 2026. «¿Del quiosco a la revolución amorosa? Un análisis genológico y estructural de tres novelas rosas anarquistas de Federica Montseny». Literatura popular: lecturas y público en la Edad de Plata. Ed. Emilio José Ocampos Palomar and Guadalupe Nieto Caballero. Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag.  [Details for the volume at https://doi.org/10.3726/b23272. Excerpts from the article here.] 

 

Panek, Helena (2026). "Getting Her Off: Looking at Women Authors in Romance Compared to Other Fiction Genres." Honors thesis, Eastern Kentucky University. 

 

Rayburn, Allison D. (2026). An Ecology of the Monstrous: How Readers Shape and Are Shaped by Monster Romance. Master of Arts in Professional Writing, Kennesaw State University. 

 

Sukmaningsih, Putri Ayresti and Rahayu Puji Haryanti (2026). "Marriage as a Mechanism of Power in Regency Era in Quinn’s Bridgerton the Duke and I." IDEAS: Journal on Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature 14.1:1701-1713. 

 

Tomas, Marina (2026). "Truhelkin Plein air: feministička romansa?" Kroatologija : časopis za hrvatsku kulturu Fakulteta hrvatskih studija Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 17.1: 7-24.  

  

Vaile, Dezi (2026). They Write Themselves: Romancing the Vampire of Lighthouse Landing. Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Liberty University. 

Romances in Ladino

Laura Vivanco

Eric just re-tweeted an announcement about the republication of some romances in Ladino.

Below are two of the original covers, which are in the collection of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.

Seventeen of these little pamphlets were among the books donated by the family of Israël-Salvator Révah (1917-1973). They're works of popular romantic fiction, written in Ladino (the language of Sephardi Jews, which is very similar to medieval Castilian/Spanish) and published in Istanbul between 1930 and 1933. [Images and details from eSepharad.com]

Karen Gerson Şarhon is responsible for the republication of the works by the
Sentro Sefaradi de Estambol. They'll be publishing 16 of them, at a rate of 3 every month and a half. The first three (pictured at the very top of this page) are: El Amor de Antonyo por su Mujer (by Moiz Habib), La Ermoza Janeta entre dos Amantes (by Eliya Gayus) and El Amor de Matilda kon dos Jovenes (by Moiz Habib). Anyone interested in obtaining copies should write to: sephardiccenter@gmail.com [Details from Salom]

Romance Miscellany: Online, In the Media, In Journals/Academic Volumes

Laura Vivanco

On the Internet:

Bornschein, Anne N. 'The Stars (and bars): race and racism in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Chicago Stars series'.

Horne, Jackie C. reviews Catherine M. Roach's Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Linda. Review of Rita-nominated Toward the Sunrise by Elizabeth Camden at Smart Bitches Trashy Books ["unfortunately, underneath the charming plot ... was a backbone of unremitting Orientalism and historical revisionism."]

In the Media:

Anonymous, 2016. 'Roberta Gellis (1927-2016): Obituary'.

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Bilde, Marie, 2016. 'It’s Springtime for Romance in Denmark', Publishing Perspectives, April 25, 2016. ["Romantic fiction in Copenhagen has mainly lived in kiosks alongside magazines — until now. As April smiles on Denmark, new imprints are bringing romance into the open."]

Owen, Jonathan, 2016. 'Gransnet jumps into bed with racy publisher Mills & Boon for content partnership', Campaign, May 03, 2016. ['Romantic publisher Mills & Boon and the website Gransnet have announced what they call a "budding romance", and will begin working together to capitalise on the interest of older women in sex and romance.']

Sanusi, Isa, 2016. 'A hunger for romance in northern Nigeria', BBC, 4 May 2016.

Academic Articles:

Hess, Jonathan M., 2010. 

Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. [See Chapter 3: "Middlebrow Culture in Pursuit of Romance: Love, Fiction, and the Virtues of Marrying In"] Excerpt

Salmon, Catherine, 2016. 

"What Do Romance Novels, Pro Wrestling, and Mack Bolan Have in Common?: Consilience and the Pop Culture of Storytelling." Darwin's Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences. Ed. Joseph Carroll, Dan P. McAdams and Edward O. Wilson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016. 167-182. Excerpt

 

Tidwell, Christy, 2016. 

"“A Little Wildness”: Negotiating Relationships between Human and Nonhuman in Historical Romance", Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature, Ed. David Herman, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). 151-171. Excerpt Abstract [Focuses on Bertrice Small's Sky O'Malley and Patricia Gaffney's Wild at Heart]