Reminder: CfP for Romance at PCA/ACA 2018 closes on 10 October

The CFP for Romance at PCA 2018 in Indianapolis closes this Sunday, 1 October on Tuesday 10 October (the deadline has been extended).

Romance

Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)
28-31 March 2017 – Indianapolis, Indiana

In response to Indiana’s role as a national player in debates about the rights and protections due to its LGBTQ residents, this year’s romance area will foreground the topic of popular romance and politics.  The popular romance community—scholars included—prides itself on prioritizing consensus and community over debate, sometimes at the expense of asking hard but necessary questions.  This year, we will open ourselves up to a few edgier panels, where participants are encouraged to push their boundaries and work together to think through some potentially divisive issues.  We are defining “politics” broadly, not solely in terms of governance but also, to borrow the OED’s language, as “the principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status.”  Thus, this would span not only party politics in a particular national or regional arena, but also the politics of gender, sexuality, race, nationality, religion, and class, among others.
Paper topics on this special theme might include the following:

• The politics of the popular romance novel
• M/M romance and the straight female readership
• African-American and/or multicultural romance and market segregation
• The academic politics of studying the popular romance
• Party politics and military romance
• Politics within the RWA
• African-American and/or multicultural romance in historical settings
• Category romance and party politics

If you are sick of politics, or simply want to pursue your own intellectual passion, you are very welcome to do so.  PCA/ACA Romance invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance, including the following:  art; literature; philosophy; radio; film; television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling.   We are deeply interested in popular romance both within and outside of mainstream popular culture, now or in the past, anywhere in the world.  Scholars, romance writers, romance readers, and any combination of the three are welcome: you do not need to be an academic to be part of the Romance area.

More details here.