ACLS is thrilled to name 28 new @MellonFdn / ACLS Community College Faculty Fellows for 2021, recognizing exceptional faculty at community colleges and their contributions to scholarship, teaching, and their communities: https://t.co/wzIkYvjidF pic.twitter.com/kGTnkDRL6h
— ACLS (@ACLS1919) April 28, 2021
It's just been announced that Jayashree Kamblé has been awarded one of the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships for 2021 for this exciting project:
BIPOC Writers, Editors, and Novels: The Missing Chapters in the Story of Mass-Market Romance
The contributions of BIPOC authors and editors of mass-market romance have often existed on the fringes of the genre’s scholarship. This project centers these sidelined histories through archival research on interviews, reviews, and industry newsletters, as well as close readings of romance novels starring BIPOC, and authored and edited by BIPOC. The project identifies BIPOC progenitors of romance novels in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through two foci: African American editor Vivian Stephens, who sought out and nurtured Black romance, and publishers who either marginalized non-white romance writing or made it visible. Retrieving these biographies and novels fleshes out the history on BIPOC romance and disrupts this popular form’s seeming whiteness. As the genre now confronts its lack of diversity and role in normalizing bigotry, documenting BIPOC romance history shows how the industry contributed to our contemporary reactionary zeitgeist but also how it can combat it.
Jayashree is one of only "28 scholars [who] will each receive up to $40,000 to advance their respective projects, which significantly expand humanistic study and knowledge" (ACLS).
Congratulations, Jayashree!
