Romance at the PCA/ACA Conference

Laura Vivanco

This is some of what's coming up at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association's conference (27-30 March). I found the programme a little confusing this year and I'm not sure if I've missed a couple of sessions. Maybe they're numbered differently?

Romance I: Fifty Shades of Scholarship

• Anna B Volk - The Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy by a Porn Scholar
• Deborah Chappel Traylor - Shades of Grey: It’s Popular, It’s About Love, But Is It Romance?
• Taylor Cortesi - “Traitorous Body”: Cartesian Dualism in Fifty Shades of Grey
• Demi Utley - Discovering the Dark Side of Love: Analyzing Themes of Power and Male Dominance in the Twilight Saga and the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy

Romance II: Authors, Characters, Readers:  What’s Changed? What’s Changing? What’s Stuck?   

• Jodi McAlister - The Virgin Subject: A Brief History of the Virgin Subject in the Immortal and the Immoral Novel
• Maryan Wherry - Loving Large: Fat Girls in the Romance Novel
• Traci Gott - Guilty Pleasures: The Social Censorship of the Modern American Romance Novel, 1973-2010
• Mallory Jagodzinski - Developing a Method for Conducting an Ethnography of the Online Romance Novel Community

Romance III: Publishing, Texts, and Authorship

• Len Barot - The Rejuvenatory Effect of Digital Conversion on Romance Sales: An Analysis of Backlist Sales and the Long Tail in the Digital Age
• Jack Elliott - Machine Reading Plot Structures in Category Romance
• Amanda Allen - “Odious Products of a Merchandising Age”: Dust Jacket Illustrations and the Marketing of Post-War Adolescent Girl Romance Novels
• An Goris - The Author in Popular Romance (Studies)

Romance IV: Across the Media: Iconic Moments, Cultural Narratives, and Real-Life Love

• Natalie Poole - “It’s more than just a great story: real-life love stories and the cultural narrative of Romance”
• Katherine Morrissey - Saying Yes!: Romance and Reality Wedding Television

Romance V - Special Session: A Natural History of the Romance Novel Tenth Anniversary Roundtable: Pamela Regis and the Rebooting of Popular Romance Studies

Pamela Regis - In this presentation I will reconsider our shared work—to understand the genre itself and the texts that comprise it—from the temporal vantage point provided by the decade that has passed since the publication of my account of the genre in A Natural History of the Romance Novel. My focus will be on the state of our work on the American romance novel, and the challenges that face us.


Romance VI: Paranormal Romance   

• Maria Ramos-Garcia - Not Your Mother’s Novel: Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy in the 21st Century
• Jayashree Kamble - “Better to Be a Weapon than a Woman”: Reconciling False Binaries in Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series
• Antonia Losano - Bugs and Beasts In Contemporary Paranormal Romance
• Heather Schell - Paranormal Romance as Genre: Response to the Panelists

Romance VII: Problem Texts and Questions of Ethics   

• Hsu-Ming Teo - Eva Ibbotson’s The Morning Gift: Can the persecution of Jews in the 1930s be romantic?
• Rachel Cole - Preferential Ethics: Romance, Race, and Politics in Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie
• Jessica Miller - Conceptions of Professionalism in Mills & Boon’s Penhally Bay Series
• Angela Toscano - Permeable Histories: Anachronism and Historical Romance

Romance VIII: Homosociality, Homoeroticism, and Bisexual Desire

• Emily M. Rasely - Triangulated Desire and Power in Urban Fantasy Novels
• Mana Kawanishi - Negotiating Bisexual Desire in Sex and the City
• Mindy Trenary - It’s Okay! He’s really a girl!: Homo/Heterosexual Desire in Gender Bender Manga
• Katlynn Beck - “I am falser than vows made in wine”: Self-Constructed Identities in Shakespearean Comedies and Eloisa James’s Essex Sisters Romances

Romance IX: African American / Black Romance

• Ann White & Tamara Buck - African American Romance Writers: Reinventing Images of African American Women
• Rita Dandridge - Overcoming Barriers: Subversive Passing in Liza Villarosa’s Passing for Black
• Piper Huguley-Riggins - No Romance without the Finance: Deferred Dreams of the Black Alpha Male in Romance Fiction
• Sarah Ficke - Incest, Murder, and a Critique of Romantic Patterns in Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self

Romance X: Romance at the Boundaries: Race, Place and Translation

• Adam Tang - Decline and Revival of American Popular Romance in Taiwan
• Mary McFarland - Sheik-Down - The Attack on Orientalism in Post-Racial Romance Literature
• Erin Young - The ‘Hoarders of All Things Asian’: (Re)constructions of Subjectivity in Asian American ‘Chick Lit’ Novels
• Tamara Hundorova - The European Wedding: International Romance in Contemporary Popular Ukrainian Literature

Romance XI: Romance Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, Critique

• Stephanie Moody - Learning in Relation to What We Already Know: A Critique of Critical Pedagogy
• Jessica Matthews - “Is Wrath Black?”: Teaching Race as a Construct in J. R. Ward’s Dark Lover
• Eric Selinger - “Sofa Paintings Don’t Make Good Art”: A Ten-Week Senior Seminar on Susan Elizabeth Philips’ Natural Born Charmer

Romance XII: Open Forum: Where are We, Now, in Popular
Romance Studies?

Romance XIV: Vampire / Romance Joint Round Table


Romance XVI: After Fifty Shades of Grey: Kink and Romance
Perspectives

• Zoe Kenney - Fifty Shades of Blushing:Discursive Strategies in Media Coverage and Criticism of Grey
• Bistra Nikiforova - Reading Fifty Shades of Grey Outside and Within the Kink Community:Discourses of Power and Social Anxiety When a Subculture Penetrates the Mainstream
• Megan Hurson - The Evolution of the Brown Paper Bag in Erotic Literature: The Mainstreaming of Fifty Shades of Grey
• Katherine Lee - The New 'Ideal Man'?: Stalkers, Dominants, and Obsessives in Current Romance Bestsellers

Vampire in Literature, Culture, and Film VIII: Paranormal and Romance

• Lisa Nevarez - Renesmee and Roses: The (R)omantic child in Breaking Dawn
• Kara Wedekind - Paranormal Romance: “One Spirit, Two Bodies: Love and Marriage in Body Swap Fiction, 1870-1931
• Aubrey Mishou - Chivalrous Predators

Vampire ROUNDTABLE V: Walking the Line Between Paranormal and Romance: A Roundtable Inquiry into the Heart of Paranormal Romance

Fan Culture and Theory: Uneasy Pleasures: Ethics of Studies/Fan Studies Scholarship

• Heather Schell - Say It to My Face: Ethics, Etiquette and Romance Scholarship
• Catherine Roach - Romancing the Academic: Blending the Fictional and Analytical Genres of Popular Romance Writing
• Laurie Kahn - Ethics, Romance, and Documentary Filmmaking: The Importance of Building Trust and the Folly of Fixed Preconceptions
• Katherine Larsen - Ethics and Expectations of Privacy in Fan Studies