An Award, Congratulations and Publications: Masculinity; Movies; Hercules; Interwar Magazine Fiction

If you've got an unpublished essay on romance, you might be able to submit it for the Francis Award, which comes with a $250 USD prize and publication (after any needed revisions) in JPRS. The annual deadline for submissions will be December 31, and the winner will be announced in April. 

Conseula Francis’s work on popular romance fiction focused on African American authors and representations of Black love, and priority for the Francis Award will be given to manuscripts that address Black-authored popular romance fiction and other work on Black love. Manuscripts on the diversity of, and diversities within, popular romance and romantic love culture—e.g., diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class, sexuality, disability, or age—will also be considered.

More details here: http://www.jprstudies.org/submissions/the-francis-award/

Congratulations to Inmaculada Pérez Casal on the completion of her thesis, Antecedents and Development of the Contemporary Romance Novel in English: A Study of the Contribution to the Genre by Rosamunde Pilcher and Lisa Kleypas (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)!

Other newly completed works on romance are:

Allan, Jonathan A., 2020. “Mourning and Sentimental Heroism in Maureen Child's Lost in Sensation.” The Journal of Popular Culture. Online First. 

Allan, Jonathan A., 2020. “'And he absolutely fascinated me': Masculinity and Virginity in Sherilee Gray’s Breaking Him.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9. [Open access.]

Charlton, Michael, 2020. "Till Death Do Us Part: Romancing the Stone, Death Becomes Her, and the Romance Genre." A Critical Companion to Robert Zemeckis. Ed. Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. 17-29.

OKell, Eleanor Regina, 2020. "Hercules as Romantic Hero in Twenty-first-century Historical Fiction." The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century. Ed. Alastair J.L. Blanshard and Emma Stafford. Leiden: Brill. 121–145. Here's the abstract:

This chapter will examine Hercules as a romantic hero in two distinctly different examples of the historical novel, which can be classified as chick lit.: Kate Mosse’s serious historical fiction Citadel, which is set in the Languedoc during the Second World War, and Stephanie Laurens’ romantic historical fiction The Truth About Love, set in Cornwall during the Regency period. Both these novels invoke Hercules by name and the hero provides contextualisation for the events and relationships therein. For example, in Mosse the myth of Hercules’ relationship with Pyrene underpins the whole landscape (it is an origin myth for the Pyrenees) and in Laurens the Garden of Hercules forms a frequently referenced part of the landscape which is of significance for events in the plot. In both novels the presentation of Herculean myth as a background prompts the reader to extrapolate from the legend of Hercules to the characters depicted and their struggles. The similarities of and differences between the two authors’ uses of Hercules demonstrates not only that twenty-first-century chick lit. is open to exploring facets of the ancient hero’s character which go beyond monster-slaying and into the realm of the romantic/erotic but also that the genre of chick lit. can exhibit qualities more commonly associated with ‘serious’ literary fiction.

Reed, Eleanor, 2020. ‘Romance in Woman’s Weekly and Woman’s Weekly as Romance, 1918–39’, Journal of European Periodical Studies 5.2: 80–94. [Pdf available free online here.] The focus is on issues related to social class, but I thought this observation, that romance in these magazines functioned as a safe space within which to explore issues, relates to what I've described as romance's "pastoral care" function:

Interwar Woman’s Weekly fiction engages with issues including the rehabilitation of First World War veterans, marriage to a widower, frustration with housework, and single motherhood. Each story invites its reader to identify with a heroine whose experiences and dilemmas may parallel her own, and it is romance’s familiar, predictable structure that allows her to work through these potentially difficult or distressing issues. The guarantee of a happy ending establishes the story as a safe narrative space within which she can confront everyday problems. (86)

Thinking Outside the "Couple Norm"

The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe by Sasha Roseneil, Isabel Crowhurst, Tone Hellesund, Ana Cristina Santos, and Mariya Stoilova (UCL Press, 2020) is a newly published (and freely available online for download as a pdf) book which raises an issue of relevance to popular romance fiction. The focus is on coupledom as a concept within society, which the authors refer to as the "couple-norm," defined as "the structure of affinity that is composed of an intimate/sexual dyad" (4) and the

book is about the ongoing strength of the couple-norm and the insidious grip it exerts on our lives as it defines what it is to be a citizen, a fully recognized and rights-bearing member of society. It exposes the construction of coupledom – the condition or state of living as a couple – as the normal, natural and superior way of being an adult. (3)

The book is not a rejection of coupledom, however. The authors argue that

coupledom is not in itself, necessarily, a social ill or a negative influence in people’s lives. Indeed, being part of [sic] couple can be one of the greatest sources of pleasure, fulfilment and security that life in a competitive, uncertain, fast-changing, sometimes dangerous, often precarious social world can offer. (232)

and they state that

There is a danger, identified by Biddy Martin (1996) and Robyn Wiegman (2012), that a relentless anti-normativity, such as that sometimes embraced within queer theory, can produce a somewhat superior, even contemptuous, hypercritical gaze that ‘fears ordinariness’ (Martin, 1996) and ‘names and shames’ ‘those normalities that are inhabited, desired and pursued within gay, lesbian, trans and queer discourses as well as outside them’ (Wiegman, 2012: 334), whilst idealizing practices that are regarded as transgressive of dominant norms. (26)

Rather, they are arguing that there is a need to examine the negative implications of the "couple norm" for those who do not form part of a couple:

The couple-form has historically been valorized and conventionalized, so that it is the very essence of ‘normal’. Whether a person is coupled or not is fundamental to their experience of social recognition and belonging: the good citizen is the coupled citizen, and the socially integrated, psychologically developed and well-functioning person is coupled. Being part of a couple is widely seen and felt to be an achievement, a stabilizing status characteristic of adulthood, indicative of moral responsibility and bestowing full membership of the community. To be outside the couple-form is, in many ways, to be outside, or at least on the margins of, society. (4)

Romances acknowledge the pressure exerted by the norm when protagonists complain about pressure from family to find a partner and, clearly, some popular romances already think outside the "couple norm." Could romance go further, however?

The authors of this book ask

What would it mean for an intimate citizenship regime to cease to promote coupledom and to work instead actively to attenuate the negative impacts of the couple-norm? (233)

What I ask is: what could romance fiction, as a genre, do, to normalise other forms of relationships in addition to coupledom, without abandoning the central love story and the happy ending?

I agree with Roseneil et al, that being in a "couple can be one of the greatest sources of pleasure, fulfilment and security that life in a competitive, uncertain, fast-changing, sometimes dangerous, often precarious social world can offer" (232) yet I feel that romance has room to expand in terms of the relationships it depicts. Indeed, romance has already been expanding, so that more individuals can see themselves and their lives reflected in the novels. The authors of the book found that their interviewees were

centring their lives around friendship, choosing to remain single, embracing solitude, forging non-cohabiting partnerships, sharing the raising of children outside the couple-form, resisting the romantic imperative, forming relationships with people from different backgrounds and defying monogamy. They were envisaging, and often finding, stability, security, love, intimacy, sex and domesticity in many different ways, outside the conventional couple-form. (233)

A choice to remain single would probably be a step too far for the romance, even if one could argue that, technically taking time to form a loving relationship with oneself could be the "central relationship" in a "love story" with an optimistic/happy ending. It is, though, already a possibility in chick-lit, I think. Non-monogamous relationships seem more easily adapted into the genre and, indeed, the genre already includes central sexual relationships involving more than two people and central couples who are not monogamous. What about "lives centred around close friendships" and "non-cohabiting partnerships"?

A short set of links: romance scholarship podcasts, LGBT+ issues, and some old Mills & Boon history

A few recent developments:

• Eric's been at the Shelf Love podcast, discussing the history of romance scholarship. There's a transcript too, if you don't like listening to podcasts. There's mention of the Romance Wiki bibliography, which isn't now available but I've expanded on it at the Romance Scholarship Database. The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction is also mentioned, and the introduction to it can be found, free, here (click the "preview pdf" button).

• Jayashree has been on the same podcast, discussing "the various ways romance can be studied. She gives a brief overview of the history of the romance genre and pop culture research, why she doesn't encounter the hierarchy of taste when teaching romance, and explains who romance scholarship is for." 
  

• Queerly Chaotic M has written a document about ways in which the romance community needs to do better with regards to recognising the harms that it can cause when writing or discussing gender in exclusionary, binary ways.

• Roan Parrish has announced she "will be writing the first on-page queer romance in any of the @harlequinbooks series romance lines!"

friends, i’m so thrilled to announce that i will be writing the first on-page queer romance in any of the @harlequinbooks series romance lines!
💗❣️💗❣️💗❣️💗❣️💗 https://t.co/1g6yzSdkqz pic.twitter.com/zwnqYV0445

— The Roan Parrish October Built (@RoanParrish) October 5, 2020

That qualifier about the "series" is a reference to the fact that, as Jack Harbon pointed out, the Carina Press imprint has been publishing more diverse romances for some time.

They have queer men that write for them in a segregated imprint that pays so much less than the main romance lines, and instead of tapping one of them to be the first... Okay.

— Hope Hicks stan account (@JackHarbon) October 5, 2020

• And on the topic of Harlequin/Mills & Boon history, at the other end of the spectrum here's a thread on Twitter about a scrapbook which "seems to have been the property of early Mills & Boon novelist Louise Gerard (1878-1970), and has cuttings from her first success in 1910 to the 1920s."

Black Romance Podcast

 Julie Moody-Freeman, of DePaul University, has started a podcast:

The Black Romance Podcast features conversations with Black writers, editors, and scholars of historical and contemporary popular romance fiction. Guests talk about a range of experiences: their difficulties trying to publish love stories with Black characters; their favorite books; writing and teaching about black romance fiction; traditional vs self-publishing; publishing queer romance fiction; the impetus for writing books that focus on inclusion and racial uplift themes; and their recently released books. These intergenerational voices of writers featured in this podcast are beginning to build a much needed archive on the production and publication of Black Romance.

You can find out more at @blk_romance, Apple Podcasts, Spotify.

New to the Romance Database

 

New articles have been published by the Journal of Popular Romance Studies:

• Asexual Romance in an Allosexual World: How Ace-Spectrum Characters (and Authors) Create Space for Romantic Love
  Ellen Carter
• The Kitchen and Beyond: The Romantic Chronotope in Pakistani Popular Fiction
  Javaria Farooqui

and among the other items recently added to the database are:

Béja, Alice, 2019. "La new romance et ses nuances. Marché littéraire, sexualité imaginaire et condition féminine." Revue du Crieur 12.1: 106-121. [Excerpt]

Hijazo-Gascón, Alberto, 2009. "Cross-Cultural Differences in Conceptualization and their Application in L2 Instruction." Pragmatics Applied to Language Teaching and Learning. Ed. Reyes Gómez Morón, Manuel Padilla Cruz, Lucía Fernández Amaya and María de la O Hernández López. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 42-59. [This may not immediately appear to be about romance but it looks at metaphors in novels by Corín Tellado. Excerpt.]

Magenya, Sheena Gimase, 2020. “Reading between the lines: A review of Dark Juices and Afrodisiacs: Erotic Diaries Vol 1.” Agenda. Online first. [Abstract and excerpts]

Saint-Jacques, Denis et Marie-José des Rivières, 2011. «Le féminisme problématique d’un roman d’amour, Anne Mérival.» Recherches féministes 24.1: 61–76.

In particular, I've been adding a lot of French-language items, some of which were in the old Romance Wiki database and some which were new to me. I'm also working my way through the chapters in The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance, adding details for each and also carefully checking each chapter's bibliography for items that are not already in the Romance Scholarship Database.

New Book: Jodi McAlister's "The Consummate Virgin"

Jodi McAlister's PhD thesis has now been published as a book by Palgrave. The Consummate Virgin: Female Virginity Loss and Love in Anglophone Popular Literatures 

explores dominant cultural narratives around what makes a “good” female virginity loss experience by examining two key forms of popular literature: autobiographical virginity loss stories and popular romance fiction. In particular, this book focuses on how female sexual desire and romantic love have become entangled in the contemporary cultural imagination, leading to the emergence of a dominant paradigm which dictates that for women, sexual desire and love are and should be intrinsically linked together: something which has greatly affected cultural scripts for virginity loss. This book examines the ways in which this paradigm has been negotiated, upheld, subverted, and resisted in depictions of virginity loss in popular literatures, unpacking the romanticisation of the idea of “the right one” and “the right time”.

It has chapters on historical romance and category romance which will be of particular interest to scholars of popular romance fiction.

Vivian Stephens and the RWA

Vivian Stephens Helped Turn Romance Writing Into a Billion-Dollar Industry. Then She Got Pushed Out. https://t.co/SI9xxoVbbQ

— mimi swartz (@mimiswartz) August 19, 2020

There's a fascinating article in the Texas Monthly, by Mimi Swartz, about Vivian Stephens, a ground-breaking romance editor.

Candlelight Ecstasies are obviously, genuinely, radically different than other category romances of the period. So seeing her talk about why that was, and the fact that it was a deliberate choice, is fascinating. Even now, 40 years later, it's impossible to miss the shift.

— Elisabeth Lane (@elisabethjlane) August 19, 2020

Stephens was also one of the founders of the RWA and the article discusses the differing visions for the RWA which led to a parting of the ways. A few years ago, the RWA leadership apparently again failed to listen to her; if they had, they might have avoided the 2020 racism implosion. And now the RWA is naming their main award after her.

A horrifying detail which emerged as a result of the publication of this article is that the account given by staff to Courtney Milan of a conversation they had with Stephens is diametrically opposed to what Stephens herself told Swartz. The conversation took place

in March 2016. She is at lunch at a white-tablecloth restaurant in Houston’s Museum District with three white women: two members of the RWA’s executive staff and the then president of the organization, Diane Kelly. Everyone has their hands in their laps, and some kind of ice cream and pastry dessert sits in front of each of them. Despite their smiles, the party looks a little stressed.

At that time, the racism roiling within the organization had not yet burst into public view. Stephens, who had mostly lived the life of a retiree since moving back to town, usually met with the RWA executive staff once a year or so, and the meetings were typically friendly, full of small talk. But during this lunch, Stephens told the women that she could see trouble was coming, and she had brought along the RWA magazine that featured photos of all the RITA winners, none of whom were Black, as a visual aid.

“Well, what do they want?” Stephens recalled one of the women asking.

“The same as you,” was her retort.

Courtney Milan has now tweeted:

My aside: I was on the Board when this conversation happened, and was told about it afterwards. This is absolutely not what was conveyed to me by the white participants in the conversation.

I was told that Vivian Stephens did not think I should be speaking up about racism. [...] I know they often heard...different things than what was said, which then had to be resaid along with assurances that no, I didn’t think they were racist, but... Just to be clear: they conveyed to me that Vivian Stephens thought I was white. They said Vivian Stephens specifically referenced this blogpost and thought I should not be speaking.

Allison Kelley is the person who told me this. Carol Ritter was also at that meeting. Those are the two unnamed staff not mentioned, but I’m thinking we could already guess that.

And Alyssa Cole's response sums up my response too:

I'm so sorry. I thought I couldn't be shocked anymore and maybe I shouldn't be, but this is extra evil.

— Alyssa!!! Cole (@AlyssaColeLit) August 19, 2020

New: The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction is, sadly, very expensive in the current format (hardback), but it's out now, and it's very exciting for the field of popular romance studies that it exists because its purpose is to provide

an overview of disciplinary approaches to studying romance fiction, and critical analyses of important subgenres, themes, and topics. It also highlights new and understudied avenues of inquiry for future research in this vibrant and still-emerging field.

[BREAKING NEWS: It's a lot cheaper as an ebook (i.e. approximately US $37.57/£28.79 depending where you go). Buy links here.]

It's edited by Jayashree Kamblé, Eric Murphy Selinger and Hsu-Ming Teo and there's a chapter in it that I co-wrote with Eric.

I'm told a somewhat cheaper (but probably still not cheap) ebook version should become available next year.

Here's the table of contents:

Introduction [can be downloaded as part of the "preview pdf" available from the publisher]

Jayashree Kamblé, Eric Murphy Selinger, Hsu-Ming Teo

PART I: NATIONAL TRADITIONS

1   History of English Romance Novels, 1621–1975

jay Dixon

2   The Evolution of the American Romance Novel

Pamela Regis

3   Australian Romance Fiction

Lauren O’Mahony

PART II: SUB-GENRES

4   Gothic Romance

Angela Toscano

5   The Historical Romance

Sarah H. Ficke

6   Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy

María T. Ramos-García

7   Young Adult Romance

Amanda K. Allen

8   Inspirational Romance

Rebecca Barrett-Fox and Kristen Donnelly

9   Erotic Romance

Jodi McAlister

10   African American Romance

Julie E. Moody-Freeman

11   Explorations of the "Desert Passion Industry"

Amira Jarmakani

PART III: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

12   Romance in the Media

Jayashree Kamblé

13   Literary Approaches

Eric Murphy Selinger

14   Author Studies and Popular Romance Fiction

Kecia Ali

15   Social Science Reads Romance

Joanna Gregson and Jennifer Lois

16   Publishing the Romance Novel

John Markert

17   Libraries and Popular Romance Fiction

Kristin Ramsdell

PART IV: THEMES

18   Class and Wealth in Popular Romance Fiction [a pre-print version is available here]

Amy Burge

19   Sex and Sexuality

Hannah McCann and Catherine M. Roach

20   Gender and Sexuality

Jonathan A. Allan

21   Love and Romance Novels

Hsu-Ming Teo

22   Romance and/as Religion

Eric Murphy Selinger and Laura Vivanco

23   Race, Ethnicity, and Whiteness

Erin S. Young

24   In Response to Harlequin: Global Legacy, Local Agency

Kathrina Mohd Daud

New Romance Web Archive

From Steve Ammidown (Manuscripts & Outreach Archivist, Browne Popular Culture Library):

Browne Popular Culture Library at BGSU and the University of Michigan Libraries have partnered to create a web archive meant to capture significant sites related to the romance genre. You can find it here: https://archive-it.org/collections/13215

This is still a work in process, and some sites are not listed yet due to some technical issues, but the idea is to capture both full sites and articles and other significant moments within the genre. If you look now, you’ll notice that there are many pages related to this winter’s RWA scandal, for example. We’ve also partnered with several sites to capture everything they’ve posted, including Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, the Fated Mates Podcast, All About Romance, WOC In Romance, and more. Our hope is to avoid a situation like what happened with the Romantic Times Book Review site, where only a portion of the important historical content on that site was captured before it disappeared.

Much of the credit for this project goes to Maura Seale at Michigan, who approached me with this idea last year [...] and took responsibility for managing the technical aspects.

I hope this becomes a valuable research resource for years to come. If you have sites that you think would be useful to capture, please feel free to reach out to Maura or myself. It’s worth pointing out that when it comes to capturing entire sites, we are doing it only with the consent of the site owners. There are several sites we approached who have asked us not to capture their content, and we’ll respect those wishes. That said, we’re happy to reach out to others if the research community thinks it’s worthwhile!

---

This makes me so happy. Huge thanks to @mauraseale and her team for all their work. Hopefully this helps us avoid losing important pages and sites in the future. https://t.co/3oBOVsmHMj

— Steve Ammidown (@stegan) July 23, 2020

Here's the announcement to Twitter, which will help with contacting Steve and Maura. I've added a link in the Teach Me Tonight sidebar to this resource.

New Publications: Faith, Love, Hope, Pastoral Care; the Gothic; Houses; Publishing and Diversity in Libraries; Sex, Virginity; PTSD

I'm not sure I've mentioned this before on here (and I'm busy cross-posting this news in a variety of places, so apologies if you see it more than once) but I've been busy working on Faith, Love, Hope and Popular Romance Fiction. It's a book which, as is rather obvious from the title, is about faith, love, hope and popular romance fiction. Since we're in a pandemic, I felt particularly uncertain about what the future might hold and so I decided I'd just publish the book in whole myself, on my website. That may or may not have been a good idea, but my hope is that this way I can get feedback/constructive criticism from other romance readers, romance scholars, and also romance readers. I've had some of that already and updated the book as a result, but I hope there will be more.

Since it's all online, there probably isn't all that much point writing a synopsis here, but it does include:

* a new definition of romance which suggests that romances are a form of pastoral care

* detailed analysis of romances by Alyssa Cole, Piper Huguley, Rose Lerner and Nora Roberts

* analysis of how "devils" and protagonists "in hell" are saved

* use of guides to romance writing and statements by readers and romance authors

Please do head over to https://www.vivanco.me.uk/node/428 and let me know what you think!

In other publication news

Jodi McAlister has "signed with Palgrave, and they're going to publish my scholarly monograph The Consummate Virgin: Female Virginity Loss and Love in Anglophone Popular Literatures, which is based on that PhD I did a million years ago."

And some other items which are available already (but not all of which are freely accessible):

Anita, Mangatur Rudolf Nababan, Riyadi Santosa, Agus Hari Wibowo, 2020. “Shift on Functions of Sexual Euphemisms in English-Indonesian Translation of Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James.” International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change 13.4: 92-107.

Ayres, Brenda, 2020. "'A Necessary Madness': PTSD in Mary Balogh's Survivors' Club Novels." Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media. Ed. Sarah E. Maier and Brenda Ayres. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. 97-120. [See the RSDB for more details.]

Burg, Jacob, 2020. “Houses of Genre Fiction: The Shared Estrangement of Postwar American Culture.” Brandeis University. PhD thesis. [Excerpt - but not of the relevant chapter, which is about "romance" but includes discussion of books which are not romance. The romances include The Flame and the Flower and Helen Hoang's The Kiss Quotient. See the RSDB for page numbers.]

Di Leo, Jeffrey, 2020. "The Speed of Publishing." American Book Review 41.4: 2, 26-27. [Excerpt]

Hirst, Holly, 2020. There are two chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic which are about romance and both are by Holly Hirst. The first is on "The Gothic Romance" and the second is "Georgette Heyer." Hirst has also produced a video about Heyer and the gothic which can be viewed for free here. There's an accompanying blog post about Heyer and the gothic here and a bibliography to go with both.

Lawrence, E.E., 2020. "The trouble with diverse books, part I: on the limits of conceptual analysis for political negotiation in Library & Information Science." Journal of Documentation, Online First. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2020-0057

Roper, Holly N., 2020. Representing the Romance: Diversity and Inclusion in the Romance Collections of Public Libraries​. M.S. in Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

RWA Research Grant 2020

Before posting this, I checked the statement that IASPR made earlier in the year about changes which needed to take place in the RWA in response to racism within the RWA. It seems to me that the RWA has made most of the changes requested (the "Action Plan" is perhaps still in progress) and I'm therefore happy to publicise the RWA Research Grant.

The RWA's statement on racism can be found here:

As an organization that just went through a massive crisis for many of the same reasons that underscore these protests for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and so many more —injustice, racism, and unfairness—we acknowledge that we have turned aside from confronting difficult truths for far too long. That our authors from marginalized communities, especially our Black authors, have been treated as somehow less deserving of a seat at the table of publishing. We must admit and learn from this shameful past, while standing up for our goal and commitment to make the future better. We stand together in the fight against systemic racism.

Academics wishing to apply can be assured that the RWA is prepared to fund academic work "confronting difficult truths."

The call for applicants for the 2020 RWA Research Grant is here. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2020. The committee is looking for submissions from a wide range of academic disciplines. This could be a great opportunity for any academic from

• anthropology,
• communications,
• cultural studies,
• education,
• English language and literature,
• gender studies,
• library studies,
• linguistics,
• literacy studies,
• psychology,
• rhetoric, and
• sociology.

and, indeed another discipline which has interesting insights to offer into romance, but who hasn't yet worked on it, to join the field of popular romance studies. If that describes you, you've read the details on the RWA and you're still a bit doubtful about whether it's worth applying, it really is worth contacting Dr. Natalie Tindall, chair of the committee, whose email is included on the RWA website.

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