The Popular Romance Project

Laura Vivanco

The Popular Romance Project's website includes posts from contributors to Teach Me Tonight but before I list them, here's a bit more information about the project itself:

The Popular Romance Project will explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective—while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks.

The Popular Romance Project will include four ambitious, high-profile, carefully integrated programs:

• a feature-length documentary (working title: Love Between the Covers) for international television broadcast, focusing on the global community of romance readers, writers, and publishers

• an interactive, content-rich website created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, allowing the website’s users to see romance novels in a broad context across time and place

• an academic symposium on the past and future of the romance novel hosted by the Library of Congress Center for the Book, and

• a nationwide series of library programs dealing with the past, present, and future of the romance novel, plus a traveling exhibit, organized by the American Library Association.

The documentary is being made by Laurie Kahn and there are some "behind the scenes" posts on the website about the making of the documentary.

In addition, there are currently three interviews, with Beverly Jenkins, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Sarah Wendell.

The "talking about romance" section of the website features posts from romance scholars. So far there are posts by

• Sarah Frantz, on Jane Austen and happy-ever-afters and the romance "formula" 
• Amy Burge on similarities between medieval and modern romances 
• Jonathan Allan on virgin heroes.

To get forthcoming posts from the Popular Romance Project, you can subscribe to the site's RSS feed.