RWA Academic Award-Winners and a CFP

Laura Vivanco

The Romance Writers of America have announced that this year:

Two RWA Academic Research Grants were funded: (1) Kelly Choyke’s project, “The Power of Popular Romance Culture: An Ethnography of Feminism, the Romance Genre, and Womanhood in North America,” and (2) Joanna Gregson and Jennifer Lois’s project, “Shifting Identities and Reimagined Careers: Romance Authors and the Self-Publishing Revolution.”

Kelly, "a teacher at Ohio University and a Ph.D. Candidate in Women’s Studies", last year "approached the RWA/NYC chapter to solicit interviews for her research study, The Power of Popular Romance Culture: An Ethnography of Feminism and the Romance Genres" (Macwilliam).

Gregson and Lois's previous project on romance was covered by the New York Times.

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Thanks to jay Dixon for alerting me to the following CFP (details announced here) which isn't about romance novels, but is in a closely related area so I thought I'd post it here:

CFP: The Power of Love 
An area of multiple panels for the 2016 Film & History Conference:
Gods and Heretics: Figures of Power and Subversion in Film and Television
October 26-October 30, 2016
The Milwaukee Hilton
Milwaukee, WI (USA)

When romance is brought to life on film and television, it becomes a public discourse capable of either normalizing or challenging behaviors and activating social criticism. Debates over the shape and form of love on the silver screen have been at the center of film and television history, pointing to its significant cultural power. This area, then, will explore both “the power of love” in screen history and the implications of love in film and television.

Who are we allowed to love, where, when, why, and how? What do these various relationships illustrate about our social worlds? Under what circumstances are characters not allowed to love, and why? What role have entertainment executives and other key figures played in dictating “appropriate” behavior through on-screen loves? By analyzing the patterned representation and censorship of love, film and television scholars can address the important dialectic between what is revealed to us and what is concealed during any historical period, highlighting the critical power of love.

This area invites 20-minute papers or complete panels that explore the varying powers of love. Possibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Forbidden Love and Unlikely Couples 
• Censoring Love: The Production Code and Beyond 
• What’s Love Got to Do With It?: Plot and Narrative
• From Real to Reel: Biographical Romance
• The Politics of Teaching Desire 
• Speaking Love: The Power of Dialogue
• Bachelors and Bachelorettes: Normalizing Gender Roles in Reality TV

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.filmandhistory.org).

Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by June 1, 2016, to the area chair:

Nicole Amber Haggard
Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles
nhaggard@msmu.edu