Romance XII: Libraries, Classrooms, Communities
In Spring 2015, Professors Katharine Brophy Dubois and Laura Florand,
both established romance authors as well as Duke University faculty
members, created “The Romance Novel” course at Duke University. Offered
as both a History course and an elective in the Innovations &
Entrepreneurship Certificate, the course focuses on the romance novel’s
development from the eighteenth century to the present, the romance
fiction publishing industry, and student creative entrepreneurship. In
conjunction with the course, Dubois and Florand launched the
“UNSUITABLE” events series to engage students in a wider community
discussion of romance fiction, creativity, and popular perception. In
this presentation, Dubois and Florand will discuss the challenges
encountered in developing a course of this nature, its role at Duke as
well as in the broader community, course objectives, text selection,
pedagogy, and preliminary feedback on the classroom experience and
student and community engagement.
Creating a Popular Romance Collection in the Academic Library
(Sarah Sheehan, George Mason University)
Academic libraries have long had an uneven record of collecting
so-called popular contemporary literature. Academic libraries that do
collect it have often done so as part of so-called “leisure reading”
collections. Popular genre collecting, especially for popular romance
novels, is often viewed as the prevue of the public libraries. However,
most public libraries do not collect for the long term needs of
researchers and students, but instead focus on the present reading
interests of the populations that they serve.
There are a few academic libraries that do systematically collect
popular romance materials, however, these collections are housed in
their respective library’s Special Collections, which does limit student
and researcher access. We argue that there is value in systematically
collecting popular romance fiction for circulating academic library
collections. As no established collection development model presently
exists specifically for this type of collection, therefore the authors
created a strategy using other genre collections and their skills as
established liaison librarians in crafting the collection. We will
cover resources to identify appropriate items for the collection,
specific selection criteria, non-traditional sources of obtaining
titles, and the creation of an appropriate collection development
policy. They will also discuss future plans for a popular romance novel
collection.
Imagine a library that collected literary scholarship written about Eugene O’Neill, but not
The Ice Man Cometh.
Such a situation is currently the case for popular romance at many
academic libraries. Circulating popular romance collections can play a
vital role in promoting teaching and scholarship. In effect, it would
mean treating popular romance novels like any other literary genre
currently in circulating collections.
Fact or Fiction? Are New Adult Romance E-books Emerging in Public Libraries?
(
Renee Bennett-Kapusniak and
Jennifer Thiele, both of University of Wisconsin Milwaukee)
No abstract provided.
Women's favourite titles in a Portuguese prison: from library use to romance reading
(
Paula Sequeiros, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal)
The library prison in Santa Cruz do Bispo, Portugal, constitutes an
interesting social location: this library is visited by a large
proportion of women from the popular classes. The average age for
imprisoned women has been increasing in recent years and with it average
literacy skills have been lowering within a population with low
education levels. Time allocation being for sure quite different from
what used to be in the outside world, with no domestic and parenting
tasks consuming their time, reading is expected to have a higher
allocation in the imprisonment context.
The aim of this research was to understand what are the reading
practices, what are their meanings and what is the role of reading in an
everyday life of confinement. The results from ethnography and
interviews were analysed according to social variables such as class,
gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, and education.
Having come to know that most request items were light-literature
novels, self-help books, and biographies/misery books, this research
took a second step also focusing on favourite genres and titles. A
critical analysis of one tittle from each genre was then contrasted with
readers' favourite passages in order to better understand what
attracted these readers.
A comparison was also made among categories – using Amorós' concept
of "novela rosa" and Calinescu's definition of kitsch - in order to
understand whether there is some form of "lineage" linking them as to
stylistic and narrative devices, and whether their popularity could be,
at least partially, explained by the use of these devices.
Concepts of light-literature and kitsch art are then discussed
according to theories on taste, taking into account social class, gender
and historical perspectives. Feminist approaches to kitsch and
light-literature, in particular, were taken into account.
