Some new publications: Romance and Italy, Nigeria, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, the USA; happy endings; Christianity; the RWA; Sherry Thomas

It hasn't taken long for the RWA crisis to be turned into a case-study:

Lawrence, Kelsey, 2020. "No Happy Ending: Leadership Falls Apart at the Romance Writers of America." SAGE Business Cases. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529741117 and here's the abstract:

This short case asks students to examine the controversy stemming from allegations of racism within the Romance Writers of America (RWA), one of the largest U.S. writers’ and trade organizations. Students will assess the organization’s response to the allegations, its subsequent change of leadership, and what this indicates about the overall culture within the RWA.

The crisis is also mentioned, albeit briefly, in the article by McAlister et al (see details below): "the implosion of the Romance Writers of America in late 2019 over issues of institutionalised racism demonstrated that the romance industry is still suffering from 'publishing’s diversity deficit'."

I'll take the opportunity, since I've brought up the topic of the RWA, to mention that the new Board of Directors issued an apology to members (archived here) and also to Courtney Milan:

The Board Members wrote:

Dear Courtney,

For our first and most important order of business, we, the members of the Board of Directors of Romance Writers of America, are writing to apologize to you. We acknowledge the improper, unfair, and wrongful handling by RWA of the ethics complaints filed against you. We offer our sincerest apology to you for what transpired. We object vehemently to the way the proceedings were conducted, and we are very sorry for the resulting impact on you.

As a result, in a unanimous vote as a new Board, we have expunged both the complaints and the ensuing proceedings from the record. This should never have happened, and the fact that it happened to you--someone who has worked so hard to champion diversity, inclusion, and equity for our members from marginalized communities--is a travesty.

While we regrettably cannot undo how your case was managed, we will be conducting a thorough review of the current RWA Code of Ethics and surrounding procedures, as well as the RWA Policy manual, to ensure that they best reflect RWA's current priorities and principles, and so that RWA can help avoid situations like this in the future.

We thank you for your years of dedicated service to RWA, and we will work hard to be worthy of that dedication.

And in other publications:

Adamenko, Olga and Olga Klymenko, 2020. "Communicative Behavior via Gender Identity (Based on the English language 'love stories')." Psycholinguistics 27.2. 44-70. https://doi.org/10.31470/2309-1797-2020-27-2-44-70 The abstract is in English but the paper itself is not.

Cassiday, Julie A., 2020. “A World Without Safe Words: Fifty Shades of Russian Grey.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9.

Haruna, Alkasim and Noor Hashima Abd Aziz, 2019. "Towards an Understanding of the Efferent Reading Stance of Hausa Popular Romance Novels." European Academic Research 6.12: 6829-6839.

Johnson, Emily D., 2020. “Exploring His/Her Library: Reading and Books in Russian Romance.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9.

Kamblé, Jayashree, 2020. "When Wuxia Met Romance: The Pleasures and Politics of Transculturalism in Sherry Thomas’s My Beautiful Enemy." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9.

Kamitsuka, Margaret D., 2020. “Prolife Christian Romance Novels: A Sign that the Abortion-as-Murder Center Is Not Holding?” Christianity & Literature 69.1: 36-52. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/752347

McAlister, Jodi, Claire Parnell and Andrea Anne Trinidad, 2020. "#RomanceClass: Genre World, Intimate Public, Found Family." Publishing Research Quarterly. Online First. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-020-09733-1

Moss, Madi Markle, 2020. "Review: When Was the Last Time You Read a Romance Novel?" Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53.1: 189-193. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/dialjmormthou.53.1.0189

Paradis, Kenneth, 2020. “Types and Tropes: History and Moral Agency in Evangelical Inspirational Fiction.” Christianity & Literature 69.1: 73-90. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/752349

Pierini, Francesca, 2020. " “He Looks like He’s Stepped out of a Painting:” The Idealization and Appropriation of Italian Timelessness through the Experience of Romantic Love." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9.

Schell, Heather, 2020. "After “I Do”: Turkish Harlequin Readers Re-Imagine the Happy Ending." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9.

Schell, Heather and Katherine Larsen. “How the Story Ends: Gender, Sexuality, and Nation in the Happy Ending”, Writing From Below 4.2 (2019). https://writingfrombelow.org/happiness/how-the-story-ends-schell-larsen/
 
Teo, Hsu-Ming, 2020. "Cultural Authenticity, the Family, and East Asian American Romance Novels." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9.