Events: 10 and 14 February

Coming up on the 14th is a colloquium which will be streamed live. "Figuraciones del chico malo: género, deseo y poder en narrativas románticas populares. Lunes 14 de febrero de 2022, 10:00-16:00"

One of the papers is

“El ‘chico malo’ en la novela romántica paranormal post-9/11 en Estados Unidos”

MARÍA T. RAMOS GARCÍA Universidad Estatal de Dakota del Sur

It will stream live here. More details here.  I've been told that it will remain available afterwards, so I'll post a link to that later, in a different post.

The other event is one I only found out about recently, it's in Australia, and it's on the 10th. I'm hoping I've got this up before it starts but I'm really unclear about the impact of the time difference.

Will You Be My Valentine?: Romance, Love, and Lust in Popular Culture

Join us on the 10^th of February 2022 for our free online symposium exploring the many ways love is represented in popular culture.

Keynote: Dr Jodi McAlister, Deakin University

It’s Not You, It’s Me: Breaking Up in Popular Culture

To register for attendance please send an email to popcrn@une.edu.au. Programme and book of abstracts are available here.

Two of the papers are:

Happy Objects: The Pleasures of Reading the Romance
Nattie Golubov, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

This paper argues that popular romance novels actively participate in the circulation of “happy objects” in two senses: they promise happiness as one outcome of the reading experience, on the one hand, while, on the other, they contribute to the circulation of affect by attaching the promise of happiness to certain objects which, in turn, connect to ideas and values. This affective work is accomplished through the use of literary techniques such as the familiar plot structure, the happy ending, the use of cliché and stereotype which I read as features with affordances conducive to a pleasurable reading experience. Based upon the work of new formalists such as Rita Felski and Caroline Levine and Sara Ahmed’s notion of the happy object, I argue that these formal elements incite an embodied type of reading. Contrary to much reader reception theory which dismisses the affective reaction of readers, I argue that (re)reading the romance is a positive, desirable experience because it is embodied, a style of reading that readers expect and unashamedly enjoy.

‘Love Conquers All’?: Race, Bridgerton, and the Romance Writers of America
Lisa J. Hackett, University of New England

 
Netflix’s historical romance Bridgerton (2020 - ) was notable for its colour-diverse cast. The show, however, has drawn a lot of criticism for the way it handled race within the context of the British aristocracy of Regency London. In episode 4, “An Affair of Honour” the position of persons of colour is explicitly discussed between Lady Danbury and Simon, the Duke of Hastings, both themselves characters of colour. Lady Danbury holds that the transformation of status came about because of
love, specifically that of the King for his Queen, a woman of colour: “love conquers all”. Simon demurs, they are elevated due to the King’s whim, and this can easily be reversed: “love changes nothing”.
 

While much has been made of the intersection between #BlackLivesMatter and the depictions of persons of colour in shows such as Bridgerton, in this paper I argue that depictions of Characters of Colour occupy a tenuous position within the genre of Historical Romance Novels. Bridgerton aired during a time when one of the biggest organisations devoted to the production of romance, the Romance Writers of America (RWA), was grappling with the issue of diversity. This paper compares the reception of Bridgerton with the events within the RWA. Through examining the events of the RWA from the Courtney Milan affair (2019), when the organisation imploded due to diversity issues, through to the controversy of the 2021 Vivian awards, this paper demonstrates that the current elevated position of characters of colour is held tenuously and more needs to be done to strengthen their existence within the world of Historical Romance.

 

Details on how to attend the IASPR Conference online 10-17 July 2020!

I'm really pleased to be able to share details of the online 2020 IASPR Conference (10-17 July)


The sign-up page and details of presentations and round-table discussions are accessed from https://iaspr2020showcase.org/

Presenters include (but are not limited to!):

Kecia Ali
Loving in the Doom Years: Nora Roberts’ Chronicles of the One

Amanda Allen
How YA Literature Emerged from the Cold War Condemnation of Popular Romance

Javaria Farooqui
Reading Anglophone Historical Popular Romances in Pakistan

Maria Isabel González Cruz
Building a Glossary of Hispanicisms in a Corpus English Romances Set in the Canaries

Jayashree Kamblé
Recoloring London: Empire and Ethnicity in Popular Romance

María Ramos-García
Transatlantic Definitions of Whiteness in Louise Bergstrom’s Gothic Romances in the Canary Islands (1971-72)

Heather Schell
Love in a White Climate: Category Romance and the Anglosphere

Angela Toscano
Big Girls Don’t Cry or Get the Guy: Representations of Fatness in Romance

Andrea Anne I. Trinidad
“Kilig to the Bones!”: Kilig as the backbone of the Filipino Romance Experience

Laura Vivanco

Romance VII: Queer Love, Multiplicity, and the (Cruel) Optimism of the HEA

Serial Monogamy? Archetype, Formula, and Variation in Paranormal Romance.

(Maria Ramos-Garcia,  South Dakota State University)

This paper will analyze the effect of serialization in the way romantic relationships are depicted in paranormal romance. The serial form tends to stretch a conflict, while the romance demands the HEA of a new couple on each installment. These seemingly opposed forces at play account for the creation of more varied relationships, a smorgasbord of options within the restrictions of a specific fictional world. Furthermore, the supernatural character of those relationships allows for levels of physical (but also ideological) experimentation that would be harder to accept by many readers in a single-title or realistic setting. It is my contention that the careful analysis of this “variation within the paradigm” will allow for new avenues of research on the nature of mainstream romance in the 21st Century. This paper specifically will analyze the variation on the physical descriptions of heroes and heroines, their previous sexual history (or lack thereof), the progression of their sexual and emotional connection, and the further evolution of established relationships on later books, especially regarding work and reproduction. It will also explore the implications of emerging story lines that challenge the heteronormative, monogamous expectations of mainstream romance, such as J.R. Ward’s inclusion of a homosexual couple as protagonists of one her “Black Dagger Brotherhood” novels, and Lynn Viehl’s happily ever after of a female protagonist with two individual males that through supernatural means are condemned to share the same body. I believe this line of study will contribute to delineate the ever-changing boundaries of romance and to expose both its potential and its limitations.

Love and Plurality: Ensemble Casting and Modularity in Contemporary Rom-Coms

(Katherine Morrissey,  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

The traditional boy-meets-girl story has typically been one of courtship. Two young people meet, stumble towards love, and then commit to spending their lives together. While the bulk of romantic films still focus on the stories of white, heterosexual, and upper-middle class characters, today's romantic films often depict not one courtship narrative but many. These films utilize ensemble casting and overlapping storylines in order to depict multiple romantic journeys within the space of a single film. In this paper I focus on two recent romantic films: What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012) and He’s Just Not That Into You (2009) and examine how the films’ narrative structures stretch to accommodate their multiple protagonists. I argue that these films adopt a modular approach to narrative and storytelling, using ensemble casting as a strategy for expanding the versions of relationships and family that can be addressed within a single film. Modularity has previously been identified as an essential element of digital media (Manovich), as a type of narrative play with time and memory (Cameron), and as an enactment of contemporary labor conditions (King). Contemporary romantic films reveal another side of modularity: its utility for managing ideological tensions and providing narrative space for conflicting cultural norms.  These films test a variety of configurations for romance and partnership, testing the limits of romance narratives and the scope of possibility for happy endings.

Blurred Lines: Queering Gender, Masculinity, and the Regency Romance

(Dawn Gott, University at Buffalo-SUNY)--Dawn was unable to present [EMS]

Regency romances are well-loved by the romance readership and have well established tropes that are easily identifiable—witty repartee, the aristocracy, Prinny, the ton, etc… When something is as comfortable and recognizable as the plot devices, tropes and general framework of a Regency, authors have room to stretch the boundaries of the sub-genre to engage the readerships’ attention and subtly tweak established mores. I will interrogate  the sub-genre, using  a queer theoretical framework, focusing on five romances—Dara Joy’s Ritual of Proof, Wen Spencer’s A Brother’s Price, and J.L. Langley’s My Fair Captain, The Englor Affair, and My Regelence Rake. These romances provide cultural insight into American society; especially as love, sex, and romance no longer seem to be constrained by heteronormative boundaries. In addition to looking at how these romances trouble the Regency sub-genre, I will also examine how they question patriarchy, gender, and masculinity. Indeed, Joy and Spencer’s romances address these themes utilizing the traditional hero/heroine (male/female) duo while Langley’s trio are all non-traditional hero/hero (male/male) romances. Regencies have been around for many decades, a stable and seemingly unexciting romance field. Yet, because the Regency provides an established milieu, it is available as a springboard for experimentation in themes and tropes that reveals much about modern American culture. These five romances use the Regency structure to create new ideas for classic love stories and blur the lines between gender and masculinity, queering the Regency in a manner that both old and new fans of the sub-genre can appreciate.

Happily Ever After's Cruel Optimism

(Jonathan Allan, Brandon University)

This paper focuses its attention on the “happily ever after,” often considered central to theories of the popular romance novel, particularly in the American Tradition. However, a close reading of the RWA definition notes that it is less about “happily ever after” and an “optimistic” ending. This paper, thus, focuses on optimism as a theoretical rubric through which to think about the popular romance novel. In particular, this paper brings together the insights of Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman.

CFPs: Monsters, MLA, and The Marginalised Mainstream

Laura Vivanco

The Marginalised Mainstream

8–9 November 2012, Senate House, University of London

Eric Ambler once argued, ‘Thrillers really say more about the way people think and governments behave than many of the conventional novels … A hundred years from now, if they last, these books may offer some clues to what was going on in our world’. Theoricists and practitioners of other popular mediums would argue that this statement can easily be transferred to other areas. Gene Rodenberry has frequently argued that Star Trek offered him a platform upon which he was able to address burning social issues as he could do in no other medium. Will Wright suggests that Westerns offer a landscape through which to investigate the narrative dimension of myth; while Tania Modleski claims romance novels ‘speak to the very real problems and tensions in women’s lives’; and Kate MacDonald argues that early twentieth-century spy and adventure fiction reflected ‘broader social and cultural processes which shaped and reflected masculinity in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain’. Such genres are rich in ‘cultural capital’, yet are routinely overlooked or considered mere diversionary, a distraction from the long list of what we should ‘really’ be studying.

The conference seeks to assert the academic importance of investigating the mainstream and wider cultural traditions, from cult followings (such as that of Rocky Horror and the works of Buster Keaton) to periodicalised ‘tales of terror’, from the regency romances of Georgette Heyer to the satirical wit of P.G. Wodehouse, from radio mystery theatre and musical revue to spy-fi and sci-fi, from food writing to fashion. We are not only seeking papers that offer a rigorous engagement with questions of marketplace, but that seek to explore the frequently overlooked.

We are especially interested in providing a space to discuss these under-valued and under-researched areas of the mainstream, in and of their own right. However, we do also encourage papers that investigate why and how culturally significant forms of popular fiction have been subject to critical marginalisation.

The deadline for submitting a proposal is 1 June 2012. More details can be found here.

Birthing the Monster of Tomorrow: Unnatural Reproductions (Edited Collection)

This proposed edited collection addresses the persistent paradoxical repulsion and fascination with monsters and the monstrous, their genesis, and their reproductive potential across different time periods and cultural contexts. With the “birth” of the monster comes a particular anxiety about its self-replication, generally through perceived “unnatural” means. While the incarnation of the monster manifests through different vehicles across time periods, it is clear that, regardless of its form, anxiety is rooted in concerns over its fecundity—its ability to infect, to absorb, to replicate. This interdisciplinary book project aims to incorporate essays from various scholars across multiple disciplines. The “birth” of tomorrow’s monster reveals the inherent threat to temporality and progeny; reproduction of the “monstrous,” as well as monstrous reproductions, threaten to eclipse the future, cast uncertainty on the present, and re-imagine the past.

We encourage scholarly contributions from multidisciplinary perspectives. We will entertain submissions in literature, medical/political/social history, film, television, graphic novels and manga. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Historical medical discourses about “monstrous” reproduction
• Medieval monsters and the monstrosity of birth
• Religious discourse of monstrous reproduction
• Eugenics, social biology and inter-racial generation
• Birth defects, deformity and “freaks”
• Monstrous mothers, monstrous children
• Monstrous regeneration
• Rebirth and metamorphosis: Vampires, zombies, werewolves and mutants
• Genetic engineering and “nightmare” reproductions
• Science fiction and inter-species reproduction and colonization
• Tabloid hoaxes and monster births
• Birth in the dystopic narrative
• Queering reproduction
  

Please send abstract proposals (350-500 word) with working title and brief biography listing any publications by email to Dr. Andrea Wood (awood@winona.edu) and Dr. Brandy Schillace (bschillace@winona.edu) by April 10th, 2012. Contributors will be asked to submit full papers for inclusion by July 16th, 2012.

Not Twilight: Female Sexuality and Identity in Recent Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy 

Dr.Maria Ramos has sent out a call for papers for a special session, Female Identity and Sexuality in Recent Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy, at the 2013 Modern Languages Association Conference (to be held in Boston). According to Jayashree Kamble,

she is hoping to get several abstracts so she can put together a strong panel proposal. Dr. Ramos is the Head of the Department of Modern Languages at South Dakota State and has recently begun research on romance/urban fantasy/vampire fiction. 

Here's the text of the CFP:

Fantasy female characters' struggle with being a woman in the 21st Century attracts millions of readers. Why? Abstract 300-500 words by 15 March 2012; Maria Teresa Ramos-Garcia (maria.ramos@sdstate.edu).