CFP: February 2027, Normandy

International conference ‘Writing and Reading Romance Literature in Contemporary Worlds: Changes and Continuities in 20th- and 21st-Century Societies’

GRIC, University of Le Havre Normandy, 2–3–4 February 2027.

Conference languages: English and French.

General framework of the conference
The ‘obvious’ nature of romance as a literary genre sometimes tends to obscure the diversity of its transformations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Far from constituting a stable or universally defined category, romance encompasses multiple subgenres that range from descriptive narratives (e.g., campus romance, cowboy romance) to warnings to readers, as in the case of Dark Romance, while the set of practices and ideas that shape its production (authors, publishers) and consumption (readers) remain largely unexplored. This conference invites participants to examine the concrete experiences, uses, and appropriations that seem to define the romance novel as written and read today, thereby constructing a national and international space centred on the romance genre. Indeed, given the cultural and economic interest that romance generates in contemporary societies, Romance Studies brings together researchers from multiple countries and disciplines: literature and history, as well as sociology of culture, economics, and visual studies etc.
 

The State of Romance in the 21st Century
Since romance is traditionally associated with female authorship and a predominantly female readership – though these categories are not exclusive – and because at the heart of romance lies a love story in which a happy ending is one of the key genre markers, questions of gender abound in the narrative and are embodied in the characters. Thus, the portrayal of the critique of patriarchy in the 1980s (e.g. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, 1984) preceded the portrayal of gender equality since 2000 (e.g. Boussahba, Temps des médias, 2021). Despite the political and legal achievements of the 20th century, notably women’s access to the right to vote in many countries, equality in law does not guarantee equality in practice, something that women and men continue to demand. By denouncing inequalities in the workplace or in access to personal time, as well as medical discrimination or the violence of the non-consensual appropriation of the female body, Romance (overwhelmingly so, despite a few reactionary productions) contributes to the reformulation of this democratic and egalitarian ideal both in society and in the private sphere. The centrality of exclusion affects the social lives of women and men and largely shapes the plot, characters, and romance fiction written since 2000—a genre officially banned in certain countries where gender-based violence and restrictions dominate legislation and daily life.
 

Since 2000, the affinity between democracy and Romance has been reflected in the fictional portrayal of obstacles to equality – obstacles that are invariably overcome by the end of the plot. How might we define this relationship between democracy and romance? Is it because romance is produced in a democracy that it sells well there, or is it ultimately merely a vehicle for the most widespread ideas at any given time? What role do postcolonial romances play in the critique of relations between former colonised territories and their former metropolitan powers? Does Romance have educational potential for the wide variety of groups seeking to reflect on their political choices in the broadest sense? The erosion of individual freedoms advocated by illiberal parties or alliances seems intent on reshuffling the social and political deck to the benefit of gender, class and racial inequalities: could one imagine romance fiction produced in support of an illiberal state that would still find its readership, both nationally and internationally?
 

This conference, titled ‘Writing and Reading Romance in Contemporary Worlds: Changes and Continuities in 20th- and 21st-Century Societies,’ aims to foster critical and historical reflection on the romance genre by examining the dynamics of its construction, renewal, and reconfiguration in the 20th and 21st centuries. This conference invites participants to consider a range of perspectives: the transformations of the genre within contemporary societies; turning points in authors’ careers; the history of publishing houses, as well as the emerging types of romance genres, of their modes of publication, and reading practices.

This invitation to reflectively consider the history of romance raises questions about the nature of these moments of construction and reconstruction in the 20th and 21st centuries. Can we speak of specific moments of transformation? Or rather, of a more continuous evolution? How do female and male participants (authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers) contribute to the production and consumption of romance novels? What are the obstacles and resistance to this cultural model? Has romance, now an indispensable part of culture, opened up a new field or a new mode of cultural dissemination? What roles do media formats—particularly visual ones (films and TV movies)—play in the international dissemination of romance?

Papers may address, amongst other approaches, the following aspects:
- Types of romance and typology. As the sea and the ocean are spaces worthy of exploration, papers on examples of ‘maritime romances’ will enable us to reflect on this type of romance and to characterise these spaces, which are often secondary in Romance literature. The conference day devoted to ‘maritime romances’ forms part of a major, interdisciplinary research project at the University of Le Havre Normandy. We also welcome proposals on ‘ecological romances’ to begin exploring this genre.
- Key Players in Romance Fiction. Whether because they are new entrants to the field or have revised their strategies, we would like to gain a better understanding of publishing houses and their catalogues; libraries and their romance sections; and bookshops specialising in romance.
We would also like to gain a better understanding of the changes affecting female authors, their CVs and their working methods. How do all these professionals connect with readers? Do readers have collective ways of meeting and exchanging ideas amongst themselves?
- Moments of construction and reconstruction of romance in 20th- and 21st-century
societies. We are looking for proposals based on studies over time: a study of a career, a study of romance novel production in a particular country, a study of economic profitability, a study of romance employment sector; a study of changes in romance readership; a study of technological developments in the distribution of romance novels; a study of adaptations for the screen; a study of the globalisation of the romance novel market; a study of romance novel production within a single language or country.

Conference Format
The conference will be held in person on the Lebon campus of the University of Le Havre, Normandy.
Conference languages: English, French.
 

Call for Papers. Paper proposals must be submitted by December 3, 2026, to the following
email address: myriam.boussahba-bravard@univ-lehavre.fr. Proposals must be submitted as a single document (.doc) containing the following information:
- A short biographical sketch of the author (150–200 words);
- An abstract summarizing the paper (300–400 words).
 

Doctoral students are welcome.
 

Important Dates:
- Deadline for submitting a paper proposal: December 3, 2026.
- Notification of accepted papers: December 18, 2027.
- Conference dates : February 2–3–4, 2027.

Scientific Committee:
Anne Besnault (Senior Lecturer, ERIAC, University of Rouen Normandy, France)
Myriam Boussahba (Professor, GRIC, University of Le Havre Normandy, France)
Amy Burge (Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom)
Florence Cabaret (Senior Lecturer, ERIAC, University of Rouen Normandy, France)
Delphine Chedaleux (Lecturer, Compiègne University of Technology, France)
Joseph Crawford (Professor, University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
Virginie Douglas (Professor, GRIC, University of Le Havre Normandy, France)
Paloma Fresno (Professor, University of the Balearic Islands, Spain)
Nuno Medeiros (Senior Lecturer, University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Delphine Munos (Senior Lecturer, University of Liège, Belgium)
Dana Percec (Professor, West University of Timișoara, Romania)
Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bienkowska (Lecturer, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland)

New Publications: Barbara Cartland, Olivia Waite, Talia Hibbert, E. Marlitt, Romance Readers, and much, much more

An item I missed last year, and which is in a book that is freely available for download is:

Hall, Cailey (2025). “Redefining the Archive in Queer Historical Romance Novels.” Unsettling Sexuality: Queer Horizons in the Long Eighteenth Century. Ed. Jeremy Chow and Shelby Johnson. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 95-108.

It focuses on Olivia Waite's The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics (2019).

---

 

Recently published is a biography of Barbara Cartland, by Matthew Sweet. The entry in the RSDB includes links, including to earlier biographies and autobiographies. Sweet's The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland has been reviewed by the BBC (and the article includes a quote from our own Dr Amy Burge). 

--

And now on to the other new works: 

Brown, Cheyenne (2026). I Read It for the Plot: Romance and Identity on BookTok. Master of Arts thesis, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. [Excerpt]

Creel, Stacy and Walker, Crystal (2026). "SLIS Notes: Psst...Do You Have this Dirty Book?," Mississippi Libraries: Vol. 88: No. 1, Article 3.

Faraon, Capucine (2026). Les mécanismes de recommandation littéraire sur TikTok et Instagram : exposition des contenus de Dark Romance et visibilité des trigger warnings auprès des jeunes adultes de 20 à 25 ans. Masters Thesis, UCLouvain.

 

Florimond-Clerc, Adeline and Louis Gabrysiak (2026). "Lire la New Romance : pratiques, réceptions et illégitimation." Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication 31.

 

Florimond-Clerc, Adeline and Louis Gabrysiak, "New romance." Publictionnaire. Dictionnaire encyclopédique et critique des publics. Mis en ligne le 24 mars 2026.

 

Hunter, Kathryn M. (2026). “Desert Dreams: Valentino, Lawrence, and Sheik Fantasy in 1920s Australia.” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 112: 56-76. [Link, abstract and some quotes.] 

 

Ingram, Toni (2026). "Romantasy, Virginity and Other Fictions." Sexuality & Culture. Online First. 

 

Jones, Bethan (2026). Sight Loss and the Tethered Self in 21st Century Novels. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. [The chapter on romance is titled "Blind Love and the Will to Run in Romance Fiction by Eric Lindstrom and Lucy May Lennox". More details here.]

 

Kamblé, Jayashree (2026). "Race, religion, and the politics of desire in Talia Hibbert’s A Girl Like Her and Take a Hint, Dani Brown." Literature, Critique, and Empire Today. Online First. [Abstract] 

 

Mantere, Neea (2026). Heartthrobs and Inside Jokes: Narrative Empathy in Emily Henry’s Funny Story and People We Meet on Vacation. Master’s thesis, University of Helsinki.

 

Mundembe, Enet and Fiona F. Moolla (2026). "Marriage and Procreation: Continuities and Transformations in the Ankara Novellas A Tailor-Made Romance and Love Me Unconditionally Against the Backdrop of Flora Nwapa’s Efuru." Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

O’Connell, Mark Joseph (2026). “No More Martyrs: Heated Rivalry, Queer Romance and the End of Tragic Legitimacy.” Journal of Popular Television 14.2: 161–79. [This is mostly about the TV version of Heated Rivalry, but it does mention the novel and romance conventions. Abstract]. 

Ottaviani, Lauren (2026). "(Re)Defining Irish Womanhood: Serials and Short Stories in The Lady of the House (1890-1914)." The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Literature and Periodical Culture. Ed. Elke D'hoker and Phyllis Boumans. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 143-158. [Excerpt] 

Partzsch, Henriette, Päivi Lappalainen, Katja Mihurko, Viola Parente-Čapková, Marie Nedregotten Sørbø, and Suzan van Dijk (2026). "One Woman Writer Everywhere: The Ubiquitous E. Marlitt". Redrawing Europe’s Literary Map. Ed. Henriette Partzsch and Viola Parente-Čapková. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Partzsch, Henriette (2026). "Moving Texts, Moving Communities: Emotions, E. Marlitt’s Fiction and the Circulation of Controversial Texts in Periodicals across Linguistic and Cultural Borders in Late Nineteenth-Century Europe." Modern Languages Open.

 

Pataki Šumiga, Jelena (2026). "“If not for her, nobody here would be reading this book”: Exploring Literary vs. Popular Fiction and Translation in Book of Love (2022)." [sic] - A Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation 16.2. 

Pierini, Francesca (2026). Romancing Literature: When Literary Fiction Meets Genre. Abingdon: Routledge. [Link and excerpts here.]

Call for Papers: PCA/ACA 2027

Since the organisers want this to be shared, that's what I'm doing! 

 

Romance Area
Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)
March 24-27, 2027 – Boston, Massachusetts
“Only in a Romance Novel”

Some things only work in a romance novel.

The worlds of romance are filled with places, situations, people, careers, and even names we would reject as unrealistic in any other situation. From the overabundance of women with flowing red locks, men named “Cash,” women with tiny delicate waists, hot single hockey players, nannies working for amazing single dads, or stalkers with a heart of gold, some things seem over represented in romance novels.

For the 2027 conference, let’s take some time to explore these topics, what we love and hate about them; how they interact with the genre, subgenres, and tropes; and what they say about the state of the genre and society.

In particular, we pose these questions:
1) what are these overrepresentations? What careers, places, characteristics seem to come up over and over again?
2) where do these overrepresentations come from?
3) in the moments they do, why and how do authors push against these representations?

We encourage you to respond to these questions broadly, and to think not just about specific texts but also about their creators, consumers and critics, to understand the broader discussions in which these texts are implicated.

If this theme does not spark ideas, something else is pressing on your mind, or you simply want to pursue another intellectual passion, you are very welcome to do so.

Who we are

The Romance Area of the PCA is deeply interested in popular romance both within and outside of mainstream popular culture, now or in the past, anywhere in the world. Scholars, romance writers, romance readers/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area. Undergraduates sponsored by an academic mentor are also welcome. Please see the Romance area on the PCA website for our policy for undergraduates; if the website is difficult to navigate, contact us and we’ll send you a copy of the policy.

The Romance area invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance. Past presenters have drawn on methods from literary studies, history, library sciences, sociology, film studies, and creative writing, to name the most common approaches—we’ve even had a presentation with puppets (you know who you are). We’ve loved all of these.

Finally, we are not interested solely in novels! The Romance area is open to engagements with all forms of media and culture that are concerned with romance, including, but not limited to, the following: art; literature; philosophy; radio and audio media; film and television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling; and apps, including dating apps.

Submit 250-word abstracts to pcaaca.org by October 31, 2026. One of us will review them within two weeks or so and notify you about our decision. You’ll hear more from us as the date approaches. 

Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

If you have any questions at all, please contact the area chairs:
Justina Clayburn - jumarn@gmail.com
(Co-chair coming soon)

Call for Papers: 11th IASPR (International Association for the Study of Popular Romance) Conference - 2027

29th, 30th of June and 1st of July, 2027

Universidad de Oviedo, Spain

 Here's the Call for Papers: 

The theme for IASPR 27 is Choosing Love, which marks our decision to turn toward hope in a world that is increasingly shaped by the lingering trauma of a global pandemic, ongoing wars, and deepening economic precarity. Popular romance narratives insist, quietly and defiantly, that better futures are not only imaginable but worth fighting for. We are keen to explore what it means to choose love as romance readers and scholars. As bell hooks reminds us: “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Popular romance is a literature of will as it imagines characters who choose connection over isolation, commitment over cynicism, and care over cruelty, often against considerable odds.

We invite submissions that engage with the theme of Choosing Love broadly and creatively. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Hope as resistance
• Care, ethics and romantic love
• Love in contexts of war, displacement, illness, and precarity
• HEA (happily ever after) and HFN (happy for now) as ideological stances
• Post pandemic romance
• Choosing love and identity
• Decolonial and global romance
• Love and civic power
• Love as world-building [speculative/ paranormal/ historical romance]
• Adaptation / romance across genres
• Finding and discovering love IRL and online
• Publishing romance
• Why readers choose romance

While our theme focuses on love, we are also open to papers that take different approaches to romance. In short, if it is about romance, we’re interested!

More details can be found here. Abstracts should be submitted by November 30, 2026.

Dissertations/Theses, a New Issue of JPRS and more!

Altamimi, Leena (2026). Desert Desires and the War on Terror: Pre- and Post-9/11 Sheikh RomancesPost-9/11 Sheikh Romances. Master of Arts/Science in Book Publishing, Portland State University.

 

Fahmy, Zulfa, Teguh Supriyanto, Agus Nuryatin, and Yusro Edy Nugroho, 

(2026). "Islamic romance novels in the Indonesian digital sphere: Between religious ornamentation and genre standardization." Diglosia: Jurnal Kajian Bahasa, Sastra, Dan Pengajarannya 9.2: 507-524. [The authors state that they used AI tools.]

 

Ficke, Sarah (2026). "Narrating Histories of Love and Violence: The Civil War and Alyssa Cole’s A Hope Divided." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 15.1.

Filbrun, Tricia (2026). "Judging a Book by Its Cover: Exploring Ethical Solutions for Marketing & Labeling Romance Novels with Illustrated Cover Art."  Honors Project. Bowling Green State University. 

Glenn, Wendy J. (2026). "Sport as Suitor: The Presence and Disruption of Romance Tropes in Young Adult Sports Fiction." Literature 6.2.

Guhr, Svenja (2026). "Between Whispers and Screams: Loudness Standard Deviation as a Proxy for Explicit Content Detection in US Romance Novels." Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for the Digital Humanities: 368–380. 

Ingram, Toni (2026). "Romantasy and the quest for cliteracy." Sex Education. Online First.

 

Jalksjö Greksa, Olivia (2026). Relational Equality in M/M and Heterosexual Romance: A Reader Response Analysis. Bachelor's Thesis, Mälardalen University.

Kjølner, Mira Pedersen (2026). Choosing The Monster: Otherness, Desire, And Masculinity In Contemporary Monster Romance. Masters Thesis, Aalborg University.

Kryha, Veronika (2026). Translation project: Game Point by Meg Jones. BA thesis, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University.

 

Kvistad, Erika (2026). "Happily Ever After?/Happily Ever After! Negotiating the Gothic in Contemporary Dark Romance." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 15.1.

Monier, Mel (2026). "Reading the dark romance: exploring audience engagement with sexual power dynamics in dark romance novels." Porn Studies. Online First.

 

Moolla, F. Fiona (2026). "Love Stories and Stories About Love: Popular and Literary Romance in Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossoms." Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

 

Moore, Jeania Ree V. (2026). Literature of Hope: Reading Romance in the Religious Lives of Black Women. PhD thesis, Yale University. [Links to abstract, and selected quotations]

 

Myisha, Nabila and Linusia Marsih (2026). "Loving Under Power: Politics and Tradition Shaping Gay Love in Red, White & Royal Blue." Parafrase 26.1:18-24.

 

McCray, Nia (2026). The Outcome of Falling. Master’s Program in Creative Writing, University of Texas at El Paso. [Excerpt via ProQuest]

 

Pérez Belmont, Andrea (2026). Smut: Contemporary Erotic Romance as a Discourse of Female Sexuality. Bachelor's Thesis, Masaryk University. 

 

Šmídová, Monika Markéta (2026). Kissing for Dear Life in a Dead Land: English Folkloric Liminality in Queer Paranormal Historical Popular Romance. PhD, Masaryk University.

 

Tandon, Lasya (2026). "(Dis)Honourable Escapes: Reassessing Sexuality in Georgette Heyer’s Historical Romances." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 15.1. 

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. 

Call for Papers: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association

123rd Annual Conference (Seattle, WA) – Nov. 12-15, 2026

More details about the conference can be found here. Specifically with respect to romance, Kristin Noone has put out this call for papers to the brand-new popular romance area:

Popular romance narratives are compellingly woven into popular culture, from the success of queer hockey phenomenon Heated Rivalry to the perpetual popularity of Hallmark rom-com movies, from historical or alternate-historical romances like Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series to the rise of romantasy and authors such as Sarah J. Maas. The romance tradition is rich and complex, appearing across various forms of media and spanning the globe.

For this special session, we invite papers and presentations which explore the diversity of popular romance narratives. This year's general PAMLA conference theme is “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” and submissions related to the distribution of power, aristocracy or inheritance, community and collective action, class or social structures (or challenges thereto), and revolutionary movements against traditional hierarchies are particularly welcome. However, we are open to all popular-romance themed proposals, regardless of how closely they adhere to the general conference theme!

Potential topics might include, for example:

-cultural memory, history, and the romance novel

-reading the romance as reparative - or investigating this concept

-heroes, anti-heroes, and masculinity

-aristocrats, billionaires, and power

-inheritance, histories, and haunting, and/or the Gothic

-representations of class, gender, race, and social structures

-romantasy, fantasy, and centering pleasure as activism

-popular romance trends, e.g. historical, queer, or dark romance

-fandom and community

-discussions of creative work in the field

-and more!

The deadline for abstracts is the 25th of May and should be submitted via the form on the website.

New Publications: An A-Z

Allan, Jonathan A. (2026). "Men’s Dress in Popular Romance Novels." The Intellect Handbook of Men’s Fashion. Ed. Ben Barry, Andrew Reilly and José Blanco F. Intellect Books. [This is due to be published on 10 April, 2026. More details about the volume can be found here.]

Bhatta, H. (2026). "To what extent does age-gap romanticization in modern BookTok romance fiction normalize predatory dynamics?. Sudurpaschim Spectrum, 3(1-2), 90–102. [I am not going to provide a direct link to this because I was upset to discover that some of the works cited do not exist/do not exist as cited. I did not check all the works, because I felt I had done enough work to engender doubts about the quality of the research. Details can be found in the entry at the RSDB.]

Clasen, Tricia (2026) "Changing the Scripts: An Overview of Gender and Romance in Young Adult Literature " The Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature, Ed. Victor Malo-Juvera and Crag Hill. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 99-112. [Excerpt available here.]

 

Evans, Anne-Marie (2026). "Romancing the First Lady " The First Lady in Contemporary Popular Culture, ed. Anne-Marie Evans and Sarah Trott. New York: Bloomsbury. 113-128. [Links here.]

 

Gow, Alicia Giselle Jeanneta and Friska Dita (2026). "Piper Bellinger as a Round Character in Tessa Bailey’s It Happened One Summer." BLESS: Bilingualism, Language, and Education Studies 6.1:25-31.

Jackson, Nicole M. (2026). "Love in Black and Black: A Brief History of Black Romance." 2026 African American Booklist. Detroit Public Library.

Jones, Cerys (2026). "Romance Readers and the Politics of Literary Taste in Twentieth Century Britain." Plurality 4: 46-53. 

Kamblé, Jayashree (2026). "Recolouring the romcom: humor, respectability, and race in a 1986 American category romance novel." Comedy Studies. Online First. [Abstract here.]

 

Leigh, Alicia (2026). "Romancing the Darkness: Understanding Trauma in the Romance Genre." Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

 

Maji, Susmita (2026) "Critiquing Heteronormativity in Queer Young Adult Fiction of Casey McQuiston’s Red White & Royal Blue." Shodhpatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities 3.3:34-39. 

 

Maranto Hill, Emily (2025). Reading the Romance Reader: Booktok, Algorithmic Subjugation, and the Fight for Cultural Legitimacy. Master of Arts thesis, Old Dominion University.

Miller, Jessica (2026). "Vulnerability and Chronic Illness in Three Contemporary Romance Novels." The Journal of Medical Humanities. [Abstract here.] 

 

Schell, Heather et al (2026). "Defining the Trope in Romance Fiction." Journal of Popular Romance Studies. Online First. 

 

Yulianti, Fiki Indah (2025). "Digital Wattpad Culture In Indonesia: Youth, Romance, And The Changing Practices Of Reading And Writing." Journal of Literary Prose and Society 2.2.

 

Zhang, Yue (2026). "A Semantic and Communicative Translation Analysis of Chapter Eight of The Love Hypothesis." Literature, Language and Cultural Studies 4.3: 104-110. 

Call for Papers: Sports Romance

From JPRS:

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is calling for papers for its special issue on Sport Romance.

Narratives intertwining sport culture with popular romance have steadily grown in popularity throughout the last fifty years, spiking most recently with the release of streaming drama Heated Rivalry, adapted from the novels of Rachel Reid. Increasingly, popular romance set against the backdrop of elite athleticism and featuring one, if not two or more, professional athletes, have become a substantial facet of the romance literary and media landscape. Despite the significant success of this subgenre of popular romance, scholarly investigations have thus far been limited. This special issue therefore is devoted to igniting wide-ranging, exploratory and original discussion on the topic of sport romance.

Adopting an expansive definition of sport and leisure, these articles may consider sports, games and pastimes ranging from international leagues to community clubs to sports that push the limit of the term such as autoracing, gaming and gambling, as represented in romance fiction, film and TV, fanfic and other forms of transformative culture and media. We invite submissions from a broad range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts, including but not limited to: cultural studies, literary studies, gender studies, publishing studies, history, celebrity studies, sports studies and fan studies.

Topics of interest may include but are not limited to:

• Sports in romance narratives in a variety of media, including but not limited to: genre fiction, memoir, screen media, music, or in the teaching of these media.
• The significance of self-publishing in contemporary sport romance
• The relationship between sport fan communities, romance fan communities and sport romance fiction
• ‘BookTok’ and the impact of sport romance fan behaviour on athletes
• Precursors to contemporary sport romance such as Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles and Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Chicago Stars
• Portrayals of gender difference and subversion in sport romance
• Class, wealth and celebrity in sport romance
• Queer themes and homophobia within sport culture as explored in sport romance
• Young Adult sport romance and the pedagogical interventions endeavoured by sport romance in young people’s physical activity

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and bios of no more than 100 words to Atlanta Tsiaoukkas (at839@cam.ac.uk) by 31st May 2026. Full articles of between 5,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography, will be due by 1 December 2026. Please note that all research articles submitted to this special issue of JPRS will undergo peer review via a double blind, pre-publication peer review policy.

Scholar Seeking Romance Podcast Listeners

Survey on Podcasts about Romance Fiction

Study Title: Multimodal Playgrounds: Democratizing Romance Readership through Romance Fiction Podcast Communities
Principal Investigator: Dr. Precie A. Schroyer, Northampton Community College

You are being asked to take part in a research study on podcasts about romance fiction. 

 

Purpose The purpose of this research project is to examine the popularity of podcasts about romance fiction and how they may affect romance readership engagement. Your participation involves completing an anonymous online survey regarding your experiences with listening to and/or watching such podcasts.

 

More details here.  

New Publications: Autism, Book Selling, Dark Romance, Ethnicity, Happiness, History, Readers

Bogaert, Anthony F.,  Jessie E. Hernder and , Jessica R. Johnson (2026). "Who “Feels Sexy” in the Google Books Corpus? Text-Mining Evidence for Gender Differences in Object of Desire Self-Consciousness." Archives of Sexual Behavior. [Abstract here.]

Datta, Sreepurna (2026). "Around the world on Amazon: Locating diasporic Indian romance novels published by Harlequin Mills & Boon." Literature, Critique, and Empire Today.

Deane,  Katie (2026). "Dark romance: an introduction." Porn Studies.

Eimannsberger, Angelina (2026). "The Romance Shop Around the Corner: How Women Readers Created a New Kind of Independent Bookstore." The New Americanist 4.1-2.  [Abstract here.] 

Grant, Ania (2025). Evolution, Feminism, and Romantic Fiction: From Mr. Darcy to Mr. Big London: Routledge. [Abstract here.]

Handley-Cousins, Sarah (2026). "Love Is a Battlefield: Civil War Memory in Modern Romance Novels." They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America. Ed. John M. Kinder and Jennifer M. Murray. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 152-169. [Excerpt here.]

Majidi, Nikki (2026) "Fast Fiction": Booktok, Artificial Intelligence, and the Profit-driven Reinvention of the Romance Genre. Undergraduate Dissertation, California State University, Long Beach.

 

Miller, Jessica (2026). ""I Shall Be Very Happy, Indeed": The Meanings of Happiness in Bridgerton" Bridgerton and Philosophy: Dukes, Debutantes, and Deep Questions . Ed. Jessica Miller. Wiley. [This article is free online. The remained of the volume is not. I have more details about that volume here. It won't be available until March.]

 

Musiał-Pudełko, Aleksandra (2026) "'You and Me and History': Queer Romance and Liberal Fantasy in Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue." Erotic Discourses in History, Culture and the Arts. Ed. Aleksandra Musiał-Pudełko, Nina Augustynowicz, Agnieszka Podruczna. New York: Routledge. [Abstract here.]

 

Niebergall, Chelsee M. (2026) "Constructing Hybrid Identities: Cultural Negotiation and Belonging in Uzma Jalaluddin's Ayesha at Last," CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal: Vol. 17: No. 2, Article 16.

 

Parnell, Claire (2025). "The Politics of Algorithmic Hyper(in)visibility: BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and Erotic Romance Fiction on Amazon." Érudit 16.2: 1–28.

 

Segura Candado, Leyre (2025). Love Beyond Conventions: Contemporary Romance and the Representation of Non-Normative Bodies. Undergraduate Dissertation, Universidad de Zaragoza.

 

Smith, Evelyn (2025). Correlations Between Parasocial Tendencies and Self-Esteem Among Romance Readers. Honors thesis, Columbus State University.

 

Vargová, Veronika (2025). "‘What will you do with yourself when you grasp that your mind is only different, not deranged?’: Madness and Neurodivergent Heroes in Historical Romance Novels." The Journal of Historical Fictions 6.1:45-66.

 

Vargová, Veronika (2025). Happily Ever After, Differently: Reimagining Autism and Intimacy in Popular Romance Novels. PhD, Masaryk University.

New Publications: Teaching, Translation, Sex, Psychoanalysis, Subgenres and more

Allen, Amanda K. (2025) "Introducing (Un)defined YA / Series / Romance." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 14.

Aulia, Aura Ratu, Griselda Callista, Hasya Ashila Supriatna, Muhammad Ihsan Fadhilah, Syifa Hana Nabila, and Zaira Yasmina Faizal. 2025. “A Comparison Study of the Effects of Romantic Films and Fictional Stories on Romantic Beliefs Among Young Adults”. Psikologi Prima 8 (2):222-38.

Clitheroe, Heather (2025). "Teaching Romance and Erotica: Designing a Consent-based, Trauma-informed Online Classroom." Journal of Integrated Studies 16.2:1-10.

Costa, Manoela dos Santos da (2025). The trope enemies to lovers : an analysis of Book Lovers and Love, Theoretically. Undergraduate Dissertation, Universidade federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

Crawford, Joseph (2025). “‘I'm Alright, It's Just so Horrible’: Teaching Romance Fictions, Pre‐ and Post‐#MeToo.” Literature Compass 22.4.

Cuthbert, Kate (2026). How to Judge a Book by its Cover: New Analytical Tools for the Book Covers and Titles. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. [An excerpt can be found here. I'm guessing it's based on Kate Cuthbert's thesis, details of which can be found here.]

 

Echaoui, Assala and Nada Ferdjallah (2025). The Power of Gossip: A Feminist Analysis of Julia Quinn's Romancing Mister Bridgerton (2002). Masters, Université 8 mai 1945 - GUELMA.

 

Hines, Christian M. (2025). "Main Character Energy: Black Girls Getting the Love They Deserve in Elise Bryant’s Young Adult Novels." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 14 

 

Hnatiuk, Daryna (2025). Translation project: Translating humour and witty elements in the romantic comedy novel Bananapants by Penny Reid. MA thesis, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University.

Johnson, Natasha (2025). "Computing the Formal and Institutional Boundaries of Contemporary Genre and Literary Fiction." Anthology of Computers and the Humanities 1. 

 

Keeler, Janet K. (2025) "Romance In The Round: A Content Analysis Of YA Novels About Fat Girls Looking For Love." International Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 6.10: 9-16.

 

Kollman, Kathleen W. Taylor (2026). The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024. New York: Bloomsbury. [The author said that "There are two romance novels covered: Madam President, an F/F romance by Blayne Cooper and T. Novan, and Red White and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston (as well as its film adaptation). I also talk in here a bit about lesbian romances in particular." There's an excerpt available here.]

 

Lathifah, Naafiatun Nur and Adjie Aditya Sanjaya (2025). "Political And Economic Ideology In The Production, Distribution, And Consumption Process Of Popular Romance Literature On The Wattpad Application." International Conference of Humanities and Social Science (ICHSS) 5: 516–525. 

 

Lauritzen, Kiara (2025). Wallpaper Historicism: Chronotopic Regency romance, popular history and British cultural imperialism. Master's, Malmö University.

 

Meredith, Tami, Maryanne Fisher and Nicole Giddens (2025, though online first). “Babies, Brides, and Billionaires: Computational and Linguistic Analysis of Harlequin Romance Novel Cover Text.” Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. [Abstract] 

 

Nicholls, Georgia. (2025). "Between the sheets: physiological sex acts in the contemporary romance novel." Porn Studies.

Novakova, Iva,  Olivier Kraif and Marion Gymnich (2025). "Exploring the ‘language of intimacy’ in English and French romance novels by means of a corpus-driven approach." International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. Online First. [Abstract]

 

Palmer, Margaret M. (2025). “Stop Acting Like a Diva”: Responses to Sexual Violence in Young Adult Romance Novels. SSM - Qualitative Research in Health.

 

Parnell, Claire (2025). "Platform Paratext: Reading Amazon Book Product Pages." Book History 28.2: 349-369. [Abstract] 

 

Raste, Anđela (2025). Classification of PUs in Julia Quinn's Bridgerton: The Viscount Who Loved Me. Masters thesis, University of Zadar. 

Raveh, Noam (2025). "The Debasement of Love and its Cure in Romance: Psychoanalysis and Healing Through Feminization in Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 14.

Ripoll Fonollar, Mariana (2025). “Romanticising the Suffragette: Historical Romances and the Commodification of the Cause.” Archivum 75.2: 465-501. [The article is open access. In the entry in the RSDB I have added a note about reader responses to it.]

 

Stevens, Alyssa, Roulstone, Sariah, Baker, Matthew J., Bergeson, Susanna

Housley, Yulin, Wood, Taylor (2025). "Book Descriptions Across Genres: A Content Analysis of “Contemporary Romance” and “Mystery and Thriller” Descriptions." Publishing Research Quarterly. [Abstract]

 

Stevenson, London (2025). Unbound Subgenres: Age Categorizations in Contemporary Romance and their Implications. Masters thesis, University of Alabama in Huntsville. [Excerpt] 

 

Tahreem, and Fatima Umay (2025). "Love Across Time: A Comparative Study of Romantic Expression in 19th-Century and Contemporary Fiction." Journal of Applied Linguistics and TESOL 8.4:1370-1378.  

 

Tebaldi, Catherine (2025). "Sex and the Supremacy of Christ: Sex and Romance in Christian Nationalism." On Christian Nationalism: Critical and Theological Perspectives. Ed. David M. Gides and Joan Braune. London: Routledge. 168-183. [Abstract. There is a short section on romance, but the name of the romance author is given incorrectly.]

 

Vargová, Veronika (2025). "Evolving Portrayals: From Freak Shows to Autism Representation in Contemporary Romance Novels." Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. Online First. [Abstract]

 

Wallin Lämsä, Camilla (2025). Yearning Hours: Desire, Darcymania, and Readerly Attachments in the Digital Jane Austen Fandom. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.

 

Witherspoon, Steve (2025). "Women Running from Houses: How Gothic Romance Paperbacks of the 1960s and 1970s Adapted a Romantic-era Visual Language of Women in Danger." Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 38.2. 

 

and finally an article which isn't exactly academic, but an obituary for a literary author, Fanny Howe, because

In the beginning, before the books she wrote under her own name, there were two romance novels about nurses. In discussions of Howe’s work, they are treated as a footnote, another charming detail in a life rich with incident. But read looking backward, having seen all that came later, the nurse novels come to look like more than a curiosity. Instead, they are the place where Howe first experienced the plotting of a novel as a kind of existential struggle; where she began working through, in writing, the questions that would sustain and bewilder her. They deserve the kind of careful attention Howe’s later work often likened to a spiritual imperative.

This article, by Meghan Racklin, gives them that attention.