CFP: PCA/ACA Conference 2012

Laura Vivanco

This is a call for papers for one of the subject areas covered at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association's 2012 Conference, which is being held in Boston from April 11 - 14, 2012. Apparently this "is a week later than we have traditionally held it in the past."

Call For Papers: Romance Area

Deadline for submission:  December 15, 2011.

We are interested in any and all topics about or related to popular romance:  all genres, all media, all countries, all kinds, and all eras. All representations of romance in popular culture (fiction, stage, screen—large or small, commercial, advertising, music, song, dance, online, real life, etc.), from anywhere and any-when, are welcome topics of discussion.

This year we are especially interested in papers on Romance on/and/in Television, to be presented on panels jointly sponsored by the Romance and the TV areas.

The Romance Area is also co-sponsoring with the Gay/Lesbian/Queer area papers that discuss BDSM and Kink in any form. Representations of BDSM/Kink in popular media and/or discussions of real-life BDSM/Kink practices and practitioners are all welcome. Romance is not a necessary component of papers to be presented in BDSM/Kink.

We will consider proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.

If you are involved in the creative industry of popular romance (romance author/editor, film director/producer, singer/songwriter, etc.) and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the representations of popular romance, please contact us!

Some possible topics for Romance (although we are by no means limited to these):

• Popular Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation, Western and non-Western media, local and comparative approaches)
• Romance Across the Media: crossover texts and the relationships between romance fiction and romantic films, music, art, drama, etc.; also the paratexts and contexts of popular romance
• Romance High and Low: texts that fall between “high” and “low” culture, or that complicate the distinctions between these critical categories
• Romance Then and Now: representations of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern love
• Romancing the Marketplace: romantic love in advertising, marketing, and consumer culture
• Queering the Romance: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender romance, and representations of same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts
• BDSM Romance and representations of romantic/erotic power exchange
• Romance communities
• New Critical Approaches, such as readings informed by critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial studies, or empirical science (e.g., the neurobiology of love)
• The Politics of Romance, and romantic love in political discourse (revolutionary, reactionary, colonial / anti-colonial, etc.)
• Individual Creative Producers or Texts of Popular Romance (novels, authors, film, directors, writers, songwriters, actors, composers, dancers, etc.)
• Gender-Bending and Gender-Crossing / Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing / Media-Bending and Media-Crossing Popular Romance
• African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
• Young Adult Romance
• History of/in Popular Romance
• Romance and Region:  places, histories, mythologies, traditions
• Definitions and Theoretical Models of Popular Romance: it’s not all just happily ever after

As we do every year, the Romance area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field of Popular Romance Studies.  All are welcome to attend.

Presenters are encouraged to make use of the new array of romance scholarship resources online, including the romance bibliography, the RomanceScholar listserv, and the open Forums at the webpage of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.

Submit a one-page (200-300 words) proposal or abstract by December 15, 2011, to the Area Chair in Romance:

Sarah S. G. Frantz

sarahfrantz@gmail.com

If you have any questions as all, please contact the area chair.  Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

On the topic of CFPs and conferences, don't forget that the IASPR 2012 conference, focusing this year on the topic of "The Pleasures of Romance," will be held in York from 27-29 September. Proposals for "individual papers, full panels, roundtables, interviews, or innovative presentations" need to be sent to conferences@iaspr.org by May 1, 2012.

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The image of the television was created by Robert Couse-Baker and was downloaded from Flikr under a Creative Commons licence. The BDSM symbol was created by Aida, released into the public domain by Aida and AnonMoos, and downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.