May Day, May Day

Laura Vivanco

As mentioned in a recent tweet, from 1 May Sarah Frantz will be leaving academia to become a "full-time, salaried acquisition editor" at Riptide Publishing.

On the same day Hsu-Ming Teo's Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels will be launched in Australia:

Launch - Wednesday 1st May, 6.00pm for 6.30pm

HSU-MING TEO

Desert Passions

To be launched by Mary Spongberg

Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe

Cost: Free event

Bookings: gleebooks - 9660 2333 or email: events@gleebooks.com.au

Drawing on "high" literature, erotica, and popular romance fiction and films, Teo examines the changing meanings of Orientalist tropes such as crusades and conversion, sexual slavery, and the figure of the powerful Western concubine. Teo suggests that the rise of female-authored romance novels transformed the nature of Orientalism because it feminized the discourse; made white women central as producers, consumers, and imagined actors; and revised or collapsed the binaries inherent in traditional analyses of Orientalism.