A different take

Sarah S. G. Frantz

Sarah's take on Laura Struves' article published by JPC is slightly different from Laura's and a lot more ranty:

I can't figure out if I'm more upset at the author or at the Journal of Popular Culture about this article. I think it's a tie, with a side-order of despair about academic publishing in the Humanities.

The author has produced yet another article about romance fiction that considers the entire romance genre to be the same -- to have the same purpose, the same outcome, the same focus, and the same manner of expression. This is yet another article astonished that romance readers aren't pathetic women who must be humored in their addiction. It hashes over the same ground in completely unoriginal ways. It's, basically, Radway updated for the internet, so the only new thing it's saying is that readers are doing exactly the same thing that Radway discovered they were doing (creating communities around their romance reading, being proactive and kickass), but now they're doing it on the internet too.

But the article doesn't consider current romance internet interactions. It does not mention Smart Bitches (started in January 2005) or Dear Author (started in April 2006). Twitter is conspicuous in its absence. As Laura says, the article talks about AAR's At the Back Fence as a current blog. It doesn't even mention RRA-L (the first romance listserv).

For example, the article claims, "Approximately fifty specific Web sites are dedicated to romantic fiction and eleven chat groups allow readers to talk to each other directly. Over 273 romance authors have sites on the Web, and more Web sites pop up daily." This sounds like something from the late 1990s. It continues, "The genre of romantic fiction is marked by a strong connection between writing and reading. Writers remain in close touch with their readers through conferences, fan mail, and the ever-expanding Internet." One thing about the connection between authors and readers that CHANGED on the internet is that it became much more direct. RRA-L was, in fact, the first place to change that, as it was a listserv to which authors and readers both posted with the same amount of authority. I was personally involved in Suzanne Brockmann's message board in 2000-2005, on which Brockmann frequently interacted with her readers. This is, in fact, where I met her and began to establish my professional relationship with her. The important thing to know is that Brockmann's message board was not unusual.

Honestly, this article feels like it was written as a seminar paper in 1997 or 1998 that applied Henry Jenkins's theories to the romance community and was then never updated for submission, but was submitted anyway. All quotes from authors in the articles, for example, were from Krentz's Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women or from AAR's ATBF in 1996 or 1997. This is unconscionable on the author's part. Giving her every benefit of the doubt, HOW could she submit, in, say, 2005 at the very very earliest an article that was written at least five years previously, without updating it? Because that's what it looks like she did. If *nothing* else, Pamela Regis's A Natural History of the Romance Novel was published in 2003 and would have bolstered part of the article's argument significantly.

Which brings us to the journal. JPC has, apparently, overwhelmed itself with accepted submissions, meaning there's at least a three year backlog on publishing articles after acceptance. That's their issue. They either need to raise their standards, expand their issues, or start publishing on the web like JASNA did with Persuasions. And certainly if this article is an example of the scholarship that they're putting in the very very long line for publication, then they need to raise their standards. If this was accepted in, say, 2008, that's still a full (generously) six years out of date *in 2008* (let alone how out-of-date it would be when finally published!). Peer reviewers should have caught this. Assuming a two year peer review process, there was still recent scholarship in 2006 that should have been part of the article (Regis), and there were CERTAINLY online communities that should have been discussed in an article *about* online communities that seems to have stopped its consideration of said communities in 1997 (ten years out of date for 2008 acceptance -- HOW did no one catch this?!).

But really, this says more than anything about the state of Humanities scholarship than it does about JPC (although it sure says enough there, too). JPC feels (and is not alone) that a two year peer-review process is just fine. It also feels that a three year wait between acceptance and publication is just fine, too. And then it publishes without indicating that there was, at least, a FIVE year wait between submission and publication. This is just...short-sighted, if nothing else.

The entire field of popular romance studies has changed in the last five year. IASPR was started in 2009. JPRS's first issue was in 2010.

But forget the academic field, the romance genre itself has changed in the last five years (downfall of erotic romance, switches in paranormal, rise of e- and self-publishing, demise of group author blogs). And certainly reader/author interaction has changed with the advent of Twitter and the dominance of Facebook. And while neither the author nor JPC could have anticipated *quite* how outdated the article would appear when published in 2011, talking as it is about online culture circa 1997 (almost 15 years!), the fact that academic publishing in general doesn't seem to realize that things change, dammit -- they grow and adapt and CHANGE -- is just...depressing. Is five years to publication REALLY the way to stay relevant? Do we really wonder why the Humanities are being left behind in academia by fields that can stay more relevant to modern changes?

Additional, though smaller, issues with the article that are just symptoms, I think, of the larger problem:

• The article misspells Kathleen Woodiwiss (as Woodiweiss) and Jennifer Crusie (Cruise). The latter may be a legitimate typographical error, because I know I do it all the time when I try to type Jenny's name, but the former is not.
• The section about covers is utterly out of date, almost a decade behind the times.
• As is the section about the "midlist" issue -- something that's still an issue, to be sure, but has been fundamentally changed by digital publishing (started in 2000 with Ellora's Cave).
• The section about sexuality in romances ignores the rise of the erotic romance, something that started in the late 1990s and fundamentally changed romance in the 2000s (again, also ignoring digital publishing).

Struve, Laura. “Sisters of Sorts: Reading Romantic Fiction and the Bonds Among Female Readers.” Journal of Popular Culture 44.6 (2011): 1289-1306.