Duke University's course on romance, UNSUITABLE (with an associated blog and events) has announced that its 2022 season begins
on Friday, January 21st [...] with author Deborah Fletcher Mello who will talk with us about What Characterizes a Romance Novel? Negotiating Industry Norms and Expectations.
All are welcome! Preregister here. UNSUITABLE events are free and open to the public.
That's via Zoom.
On February 26th, also online, there will be a
Black Romance Master Class. Sponsored by the Center for Black Diaspora.
"Those Purple Hands Really Intrigues Me:" Beverly Jenkins' Indigo
The aim of this master class is to offer a pedagogical and scholarly approach to reading and teaching Black Romance fiction, specificially, historical Black romance novels. What this class will offer is a model, using Indigo as the class text, for teaching the literariness of novel, its continuity with the history of the romance genre, and the importance of reassessing the teaching of and writing about Black romance, and the romance genre in general. What the course will offer Black romance readers, scholars, and teachers is a critical approach easily adapted to anti-racist pedagogy and scholarly writing about romance.
The class is being led by Dr Margo Hendricks and you can register here.
On the topic of Black romance, I was interested to see that Harlequin have now produced a page to spotlight their romances by Black authors (most seem to be "Black romance," though some may not be, due to having one or more non-Black protagonist): https://www.harlequin.com/shop/pages/black-romance-stories.html They seem to be appearing in a wide range of lines: Special Edition, Presents, Desire, Intrigue, Romantic Suspense, Medical Romance, Romance, Heartwarming, Historical and ebook-only imprints.
Dr Sam Hirst has released a round-table conversation with KJ Charles, Rose Lerner, Cat Sebastian and Olivia Waite which was part of a recent conference on Heyer:
