New Publications: French Canadian Romance, Strangled Women and Dark Romance, Migration and Marriage, A Trans Romance author from 1909, Black Romance, Trauma

Love Stories Now and Then: A History of Les romans d'amour, by Marie-Pier Luneau and Jean-Philippe Warren was published in October. However, since they kindly sent me a copy so I could add more details about it to the Romance Scholarship Database, I put off mentioning it here until I'd been able to read it. It's a translation of their L’amour comme un roman. Le roman sentimental au Québec d’hier à aujourd’hui (2022). The book (in both versions)

is the first comprehensive survey of Quebec and French-Canadian romance novels. It tackles questions that everybody asks. What is “love at first sight”? How do class, national identity, religion, and race influence choice of partners? What are the rules to flirting? What are the limits to expressing one’s desires? What are people’s expectations in marriage? What is the place of sexuality and how does it differ in French and English culture in North America? (from the publisher's website)

I've added quotations from the book to the entry in the Database, and those give more information about the content of the chapters: "Repressed Love (1830-1860)"; "Sublimated Love (1860-1920)"; "Domesticated Love (1920-1940)"; "Celebrated Love (1940-1965)"; "Serial Love (1965-2000)"; "Love Despite Everything (since 2000).

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Mary, E. (2024). "Strangled Women: Popular Culture, ‘Conservative Modernity’ and Erotic Violence in Britain, c.1890–1950." Cultural and Social History, 1–19. 

This open access paper "analyses popular novels and films in early-mid twentieth-century Britain. It argues that strangled women were increasingly depicted in violent narratives of adventure and domination by a male lover". That includes E. M. Hull's The Sheik, which is one of a number of novels (mostly non-romance) that are discussed here, which is why I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog. 

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Here's a piece in The Conversation by Magali Bigey on "dark romance" and why we shouldn't worry about its readers but we should be encouraging discussion about these novels: https://theconversation.com/reading-dark-romance-the-ambiguities-of-a-fascinating-genre-243982  

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And onto the new arrivals in the romance scholarship database:

Burge, Amy (2024). "Marriage migration, intimacy and genre in Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test (2019) and Brigitte Bautista’s You, Me, U.S. (2019)." Literature, Critique, and Empire Today.

Imperitura, Lorenzo (2024). The Forgotten Queer Utopia. Master’s thesis, The Arctic University of Norway. [Since I think the genderqueer novel discussed here (Beatrice the Sixteenth, published in 1909 and written by Irene Clyde, an author described "variously as non-binary, genderfluid, transgender, or a trans woman") sounds like a romance, I feel it's worth sharing this thesis with readers of this blog, even though Imperitura is primarily assessing the work as utopian fiction.]

Johnson, Jacqueline Elizabeth (2024). Labors of Love: Black Women, Cultural Production, and the Romance Genre. PhD thesis, University of Southern California. [Analyses work by Rebekah Weatherspoon and Katrina Jackson.]

Kindleysides, Alicia (2024). Broken Hearts: Writing The Representation of Trauma and Trauma Recovery in a Post-Trauma Romance Novel. PhD, Central Queensland University.

Call for Notes on Preserving Primary Sources

Over on Bluesky, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies just posted:

Last year Jonathan Allan asked "what happens if those primary texts we study are inaccessible to a future researcher? How should the field of popular romance studies begin the process of archiving the primary materials that are studied and talked about?" 

It can be easy to forget how much information can be lost, removed, or withdrawn from distribution. We'd be interested in follow-up notes from people grappling with this issue, on an institutional level (like libraries) or individual level!

And if you're looking for ways to preserve material that might disappear, the information is out there, and some ideas are floating around Bluesky too (for example, this piece from @thetransfemininereview.com).

I thought I'd share the call more widely, as this is such an important issue (and one I'd love to read more about).

"Notes" in JPRS are "Short, with an upper word limit of 1,500 words" (and you can read more about how to submit them here).

Abortion, Witches and New Publications (Gaming, Asexuality, Teen Sexuality)

The Fated Mates podcast posted (on Bluesky) that "Elda Minger was the first romance novelist to put condom use on the page. When we spoke to her about the choice she made, she told us about the realities of the world before Roe, when abortion was neither safe nor legal." They've put a clip of Minger's hard-hitting comments on YouTube and it's less than 4 minutes long. The novel is Elda Minger's Untamed Heart, which as far as I can tell was published by Harlequin in 1983. [If I've got that wrong, or if you know of a romance published earlier which includes condom use, please leave a comment!]

I missed this article when it was first posted, in 2023, but it's worth a read. Taking a look at witch romances set in small towns, Jenny Hamilton argues that

After reading a certain number of these books, it becomes impossible to avoid aligning the witch fear of non-witches with white fear of non-whites, particularly given the close associations between whiteness and small-town and suburban America.

And some new publications:

 

Guajardo, Ashley ML (2024). "The BookTok to Player Pipeline: TikTok and the Baldur’s Gate 3 Fandom." Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2024 Conference Playgrounds

 

Heynderickx, Jasmine (2024). “It really got to me [...] The movies where the main characters freaked out about being virgins at the age of sixteen”: Narrative Subversion as a Queer Strategy in Loveless. Master of Arts, Ghent University.

Medrano-González, Claudia (2024). "On the Convergence Between Femme Theory and Popular Feminine Fiction: Adolescent Girls’ (Re)territorialisation Of Fem(me)ininity Through Young Adult Erotic Romance." Journal of Femininities (published online ahead of print 2024). https://doi.org/10.1163/29501229-bja10005

Call for Papers: Popular Romance and Sexuality/Erotica

From Jonathan Allan and Catherine Roach:

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the journal Porn Studies focused on 

“Popular Romance and Sexuality/Erotica”

In “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different,” American feminist scholar Ann Barr Snitow laid the groundwork for what has become something of a perpetual debate: is the romance genre pornography? For nearly fifty years, scholars, commentators, authors, publishers, and readers have debated this question, and truth be told, after fifty years, opinions are divided and there is no clear consensus. In particular, some feminist scholars favour the relationship while others dismiss it as pejorative. This Call for Papers is interested not in answering the “is it or isn’t it” question but in thinking creatively about affinities between “porn studies” and “popular romance studies.” What fruitful relationship exists between these two fields of inquiry?

To this end, the Call for Paper seeks new approaches to an old and often antagonistic question. What if instead of comparing romance novels to pornography, the relationship was about the similar ways both genres are scrutinized, dismissed, and controlled? For instance, it is very common for concerns to exist about the potential harms of pornography to the viewer and society. Strikingly, the 1970 Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography includes lengthy discussions of pulp fictions, such as love stories with sexual content alongside the visual medium. The history of American censorship debates can be written alongside the history of popular romance novels. In 1973, Miller v. California appears only months after the first blockbuster romance The Flame and the Flower (1972). During the 1960s, newsstands became sites of potential crime. In 2024, “obscenity” debates have returned in the context of book banning, library wars, and battles over school sex ed curricula. Age verification for pornography is becoming normalized in various jurisdictions. How might these moves affect popular fiction, especially erotic fiction and popular romance? It is not difficult to imagine age verification as a requirement for access to sexually explicit fiction or queer romance—or indeed to texts that challenge heteronormativity, patriarchy, or white Christian nationalism.

 More details can be found here. The closing date is 1 December 2024.

Beverly Jenkins in Conversation with Dr. Carole V. Bell

The Social Transformation Research Collaborative at DePaul University is holding a symposium on Writing, Race, and Memory on 22 October 2024. One of the keynotes is 

11:20am - Keynote | On Romance: A conversation with author Beverly Jenkins (Indigo, Forbidden) and Dr. Carole V. Bell

According to the Instagram post (from which I've taken the graphic), the conversation will be about Black romance. The full programme is here but if you'd just like to sign up for the zoom conversation between Beverly Jenkins and Carole Bell, you can do that here.

JPRS Editors Needed

Eric Selinger has announced that "This spring, after 15 years, I will be stepping down as Executive Editor of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies." In this role, and others, he's been central to establishing popular romance studies as a field, so I'd like to express my appreciation for that.

However, this means that JPRS is now "seeking an experienced replacement who is passionate about romance scholarship and can help lead the journal as we grow!"

The full job description for the Executive Editor role can be found here. Key points to note are:

• This is a volunteer position.
• This is a senior role that requires previous experience of editorial work at an academic journal (or equivalent).
• We estimate this role would require a commitment of 2-3 hours per week.
• The closing date is 30 November 2024.

They're "also looking to add two Associate Editors to the team to help with regular operations. This is a good position for someone who is interested in getting some experience in the behind-the-scenes operation of an academic journal."

The full job description for Associate Editors can be found here. Key points to note are:

• This is a volunteer position.
• This role would be well-suited to those without specific editorial experience but who would like to gain an insight into academic editorial roles.
• We estimate this role would require a commitment of 1-2 hours per week.
• The closing date is 30 November 2024.

New Publications: LGBTQ+ romance, dark romance, rape, publishing, folklore and coral

Items whose titles are hyperlinked are accessible freely.

Greening, Alo (2024). History, Huh: A Post-Modern Study of the Consumption of Queer Romance. Master of Arts in Women and Gender Studies, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Hernandez, Janeth (2024). Exploring Consent: An Analysis of Consent in Dark Romance and Contemporary Romance Books. Master of Arts in Writing: Book Publishing, Portland State University. 

 

Keran, Molly (2024). The Genre of Rape: Women’s Popular Literature and Contemporary Representations of Sexual Violence. PhD thesis, University of Michigan. 

Kousholt, Moa (2024). A Time, A Place, and A Person: A comparative literary analysis of Red, White & Royal Blue and One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston and how queer representation can be problematized in a classroom context. Teacher Education Programme for Upper Secondary School, Linnaeus University. 

 

Miclea, Adelina-Cerasela (2024). The Scientification of Love: A Cognitive Literary Approach to Romance Novels. PhD, Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara. [Only an index and summary is currently available online.] 

Poirel, Carole (2024). "The long tail business model in publishing: The case of Hachette's romance division in France " Business Model Innovation in Creative and Cultural Industries, Ed. Pierre Roy, Estelle Pellegrin-Boucher. Routledge. 69-88. [Abstract available from https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032714462-5 ]

Šmídová, Monika Markéta (2024). " 'Oh, my friend, those weren’t angels': Trauma, Recovery and Folklore in The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal and Spectred Isle by KJ Charles". Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

 

Valovirta, Elina (2024) "Love and Loss: Corals and Cultural Sustainability in Caribbean Popular Romance Novels." Arrivals and Departures: The Human Relationship with Changing Biodiversity. Ed. Otto Latva, Heta Lähdesmäki, Kirsi Sonck-Rautio and Harri Uusitalo. De Grutyer. 109-126. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111215273-006

 

CFPs: IASPR Conference 2025 and Conference of the Popular Culture Association 2025

From the IASPR website, two calls for papers:

Romantic Regions: Call for Papers, IASPR Conference 2025

We are now inviting submissions for the 2025 International Association for the Study of Popular Romance Conference. It will take place from June 24-26 2025 at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, with a Zoom option for people unable to attend in person. We are accepting submissions for papers, panels, or workshops delivered in English or Spanish. 

Our theme for the 2025 IASPR conference is Romantic Regions, thinking through the evolving relationships between romance, place, and space. [...]

Submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words, by November 30, 2024

[More details, including a note for those who "do not have a permanent academic job at a university (eg. PhD students, contingently employed staff, independent scholars), you may be eligible for the Kathleen Seidel Travel Grant" at https://www.iaspr.org/conferences/romantic-regions-call-for-papers-iaspr-conference-2025/ ]

CFP: Romance Area, Conference of the Popular Culture Association (2025)

Romance Area

Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

April 16-19, 2025 – New Orleans, Louisiana

Disrobing the Trope

It does not take an expert to see how important tropes currently are in the marketing of romantic media. Whether we’re talking about friends who find themselves in an only-one-bed situation (and thus become lovers), or enemies forced to fake date (and thus become lovers), or a grump who gets a second chance (to become lovers) with their sunshine-y childhood sweetheart, tropes have become ubiquitous to the way romance narratives are discussed.

In the Romance area of PCA, however, we are experts—and thus, for this year’s conference, we’d like to provoke people to think through and theorize the trope in popular romantic media. [...]

Submit 250-word abstracts to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2024

[More details at https://www.iaspr.org/frontpage/cfp-romance-area-conference-of-the-popular-culture-association-2025/ ]

Research Degree Opportunity: Falmouth University (UK)

If you're interested in doing a Research MPhil or PhD on romance, you might be interested in this announcement from Falmouth University.

They

are seeking ground-breaking, innovative, and challenging practice-based and critical research proposals on Romance and/or Erotica in their widest sense, including, but not limited to, Bonkbusters and bestsellers, soap operas and mini-series, Gothic and Pulp Romances, melodrama and fantasy, popular magazines and literary Erotica, Hollywood and Bollywood, Romcoms and sitcoms, high and low culture, the sensational and the scandalous, digital depictions and heartwarming tales, the private and the public, Hallmark and Pornhub. 

Proposals on creative writing, literature, history, fashion, illustration, film, TV, popular culture, performance studies, games, and many other genres and mediums will be considered.

To find out more, see https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/research/phd-mphil/doctoral-project-briefs/romance-erotica

New Publications, an Exhibition on Romance, and Coverage in the Media

• Indiana University's Lilly Library has an exhibition (from August 19th 2024 – February 15th 2025) celebrating romance:

In 2021, the Lilly Library became the first major American special collections library to take romance seriously—and we owe the foundation of this visionary collection to author, scholar, and antiquarian bookseller Rebecca Romney, cofounder of the bookselling firm Type Punch Matrix. A romance reader herself as well as an expert on the history of the book, Romney set out to assemble a collection of 100 important works in the history of romance fiction from 1769 to 1999. Because some of the hundred entries in the catalog contain multiple titles (such as the first 1,500 Harlequin Presents romances), these substantial and carefully researched selections became the core of the Lilly’s new romance collection. One of the things we love most about Romney’s selections is her focus on diversity—the history of the romance novel has never been only about straight white men and women.

As we continue to add historical and 21st century titles to the collection, our focus remains on the importance of the romance genre in the history of the book, the ways in which it empowered readers and writers, and also on the potential the genre holds for those who are not taken seriously by people in power to tell their stories of finding a “happily ever after” ending.

• Women's Weekly has an article marking Harlequin Mills & Boon's Australia office's 50th birthday. The article on M&B's history heavily features IASPR's Dr Jodi McAlister. 

• Slate reports on a trend in anti-billionaire romance novels.

New books are questioning the ethics of billionaires, having the heir to a family fortune come out against his father’s unethical business practices, and (in the historical context) having the wealthy risk their place in society by supporting progressive causes like the abolition of slavery. At least one author is trying to put together an antibillionaire romance anthology.

• Time has an article on the evolution of romance covers. This complements their list of the best 50 romances to read, curated by author Casey McQuiston, who also wrote an article for them explaining why "Romance Novels are Literature."
  

Even at its cheekiest or darkest or most satirical, it’s a genre made of sincerity. Opening ourselves earnestly to an emotional experience feels dangerous, and danger makes us nervous, and when we’re nervous, we laugh.But if we don’t laugh, if we don’t turn away, if we stop pretending to be too cool or too intellectual or too ironic to acknowledge our own desire, romance has so much to show us about ourselves. Which is exactly what literature should do.

And here are the new publications I've come across:

 

Horst, Lauren (2024). "The Romance Novel." The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 8: American Fiction since 1940, Ed. Cyrus R. K. Patell and Deborah Lindsay Williams. Oxford University Press. 468–483. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844729.003.0041

 

Horst, Lauren (2024). "Exemplum J. R. Ward, Dark Lover (2005)." The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 8: American Fiction since 1940, Ed. Cyrus R. K. Patell and Deborah Lindsay Williams. Oxford University Press.  484–489. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844729.003.0042  

 

Kamrath, Kelly (2024). French Interwar Popular Romance and Ideals of Femininity: A Literary and Historical Study of Magali. Master of Arts, University of Nebraska. 

 

Moussaoui, Abdelghani (2024). "On the Racialization of the Moroccan ‘Other’ in Orientalist Romance." International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 6.2:103–116.

Moussaoui, Abdelghani (2024). "The Discursive Formation of Ethnic Subjectivities and Identities in Popular Romance." International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 6.3:106-119.

 

Stewart, Eowyn (2024). A Hero in Tears: How the Female Gaze Elicits Male Emotional Vulnerability in Romance Novels. Honors Thesis, Abilene Christian University.

New Publications: Migration, India, Gender, Consent, Libraries and Translation

Burge, Amy (2024). "Marriage migration, intimacy and genre in Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test (2019) and Brigitte Bautista’s You, Me, U.S. (2019)." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. [This is forthcoming, but a pre-print is available from the page I've linked to.]

Montebello, Sophie (2024). The Representation and Self-Representation of Anglo-Indians in Literature from 1885 to the Present Day. PhD thesis. The Open University.

Moussaoui, Abdelghani (2024). "Gender as a ‘Discursive Practice’ in Romance Discourse." International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 6.2:654–665.

 

Speese, Erin K. Johns (2024). "Came for the Smut, Stayed by Consent: Desire and Consent in Sarah J. Maas’s Fictional Worlds." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

Velasquez, Diane L. and Jennifer Campbell-Meier, Jennifer (2024). "Romance Genre and Collection Management in Australia and New Zealand Public Libraries." Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association. [Online first. Abstract here, with the article itself available only with a login.]

Vişan, Nadina (2024). "Untranslatability in Regency Romances: Explicitation or Implicitation?" British and American Studies 30:233-241. [Discusses translation from English into Romanian.]

New Publications, including a lot of theses

Barta, Orsolya (2024). Surprise Babies, Bad Mothers & Happily Ever Afters: Pregnancy Narratives and the Concept of Motherhood In Eight Contemporary Romance Novels. Masters thesis, University of Uppsala. [This was not available online when I checked, but the abstract can be found here.]

Båtstrand, Johanne Marie (2024). Bringing the Male to his Knees - Taming the Dangerous Lover: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre as the blueprint for love relations in Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses. Masters thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

 

Crawford, Joseph (2024). "From Romantic Gothic to Gothic Romance, With a Little Help from Twilight." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

Cuthbert Van Der Veer, Kate (2023). Cover story: developing methodologies for the analysis of book titles and book covers. PhD Thesis, School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland. [About half of the corpus here are Australian rural romance novels, so there's a lot of discussion of romance.]

Edmunds, Amy (2024). Revamping The Gaze: How Twilight Hosts the Conditions for Female Spectatorship. Honors Thesis, University of Michigan.

Hashim, Ruzy Suliza and Mohd Muzhafar Idrus (2024). “Unblessed Be Thy Milk: Filial Obedience, Repentance, and Forgiveness in Malay Popular Fiction”. The Asian Family in Literature and Film: Challenges and Contestations-South Asia, Southeast Asia and Asian Diaspora, Volume II. Ed. Bernard Wilson and Sharifah Aishah Osman. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. 139-160. [Abstract here.]

 

Pesonen, Sini (2024). Romance Novels and Possibilities in Life : Analyzing Ethical Aspects in Happiness and Happy Place. Masters thesis, University of Helsinki. 

 

Ramstad, Tessa (2024). Tall, Dark, and Ideal: #Bookboyfriends in six contemporary romance novels. Masters thesis, University of Uppsala.

 

Roach, Catherine M. (2024). "Fantasy and Desire: From my Mother’s Stack of Trashy Novels to an Experiment in Writing at Field’s Edge." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

 

Tavallaie, Marjan (2024). ”It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”: The representation of domestic violence in popular romance novel It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover. Masters thesis, Karlstad University.

Wiseman, Sarah Rose (2024). Hearts and Hashtags: How BookTok is Reshaping Romance Literature. Honors Program in English and Media Studies, Guilford College.

New book on historical romance and other new articles

Conflict and Colonialism in 21st Century Romantic Historical Fiction: Repairing the Past, Repurposing History, edited by Hsu-Ming Teo and Paloma Fresno-Calleja is out today (13 June) from Routledge. The introduction, "Conflict and Colonialism in 21^st Century Romantic Historical Fiction: Repairing the Past, Repurposing History" is open access and can be downloaded from here.

The other essays about romance in the collection are:

The Australian Convict Prostitute Romance: Narrating Social and Sexual Justice for “Damned Whores” - Hsu-Ming Teo

Love in Victorian London: Immigrant Histories and Intersecting Diversities in K. J. Charles’s Sins of the Cities - Jayashree Kamblé 

Language, Sexuality and “Necessary” Anachronism in Lorraine Heath’s Neo-Victorian Popular Romance Series Scandalous Gentlemen of St. James - Carmen Pérez Ríu

Suffragette Historical Romances: Re-Purposing Women’s Suffrage in a Postfeminist Context - Mariana Ripoll-Fonollar

The US Civil War and its Aftermath in Historical Quaker Romances Hailing White Heroines as Builders and Healers of the Nation - Carolina Fernández Rodríguez 

Historical Reparation, Emotional Justice: The Navajo Long Walk in Evangeline Parsons Yazzie’s Her Land, Her Love - Silvia Martínez-Falquina

When a Jew Loves a Nazi: Problems with Repurposing the Holocaust for Reparative Romance - Hsu-Ming Teo

Abstracts for all of those can be found here.

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Other recent publications are:

Austin, Allan W. (2024) "Courting Tragedy: Romance and the Liberal Redemption of Japanese American Mass Incarceration". Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13. [Of the two novels discussed, only one is a romance, by Danielle Steel.]

Lukas, Iwan, Muarifuddin, and Rahmawati Azi (2024). "Formula Romance dalam Roman Mes Amis Mes Amours Karya Marc Lévy." LE PARIS: Journal de Langue, Litterature, et Culture 5.1:15-3. [There's an abstract in English but the article itself is written in what I assume is Indonesian.]

 

Rimmer, Abi (2024). "Can I have a side hustle as a doctor?" BMJ 385. [Short article which includes quotes from Fearne Hill. Abstract here.]

Sanders, Lise Shapiro (2024). "Girls Growing Up: Reading ‘Erotic Bloods’ in Interwar Britain". The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals, edited by Kristine Moruzi, Beth Rodgers and Michelle Smith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 93-111. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399506663-009

Call for Papers: Bridgerton and Philosophy

 

Call for Abstracts 

Bridgerton and Philosophy 

Edited by Jessica Miller

The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium. Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. 

Essays may focus on the Netflix series (including Queen Charlotte), the books, or both.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Submission deadline for abstracts (350-500 words) and CVs: August 30, 2024
2. Submission deadline for drafts of accepted papers: January 27, 2025

Kindly submit by e-mail to Jessica Miller: Bridgertonandphilosophy@gmail.com

The final papers should be about 3000 words including notes. More details about possible themes/topics can be found here.

New Publications: A History of the RWA; Fat in Contemporary Romance; Romance and Philosophy

In a rather weird coincidence, just days after the Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy (which, as explained elsewhere, does not mean it's going to cease to exist, because 

the RWA expects a “swift resolution” to its bankruptcy restructuring, which “will not impact its day-to-day operations” of providing training and other resources to its members. The group “is not going out of business, as some others have made it sound,” (Beckett, The Guardian)

Christine A Larson's Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success is coming out with Princeton University Press. It could be considered a history of the RWA and romance publishing, though Larson emphasises the book's wider appeal to those interested in the topic of

self-organization and mutual aid in the digital economy. In Love in the Time of Self-Publishing, Christine Larson traces the forty-year history of Romancelandia, a sprawling network of romance authors, readers, editors, and others, who formed a unique community based on openness and collective support. Empowered by solidarity, American romance writers—once disparaged literary outcasts—became digital publishing’s most innovative and successful authors. Meanwhile, a new surge of social media activism called attention to Romancelandia’s historic exclusion of romance authors of color and LGBTQ+ writers, forcing a long-overdue cultural reckoning.

Drawing on the largest-known survey of any literary genre as well as interviews and archival research, Larson shows how romance writers became the only authors in America to make money from the rise of ebooks—increasing their median income by 73 percent while other authors’ plunged by 40 percent. The success of romance writers, Larson argues, demonstrates the power of alternative forms of organizing influenced by gendered working patterns. It also shows how networks of relationships can amplify—or mute—certain voices.

I've got excerpts and links in the Romance Scholarship Database entry.

 

Some other new publications are:

 

Cole, Lauryn (2023) Fat and Fabulous: The Power of Contemporary Romance as a Site of Anti-Oppression Work. Bachelor of Arts dissertation, University of Oregon. [This focuses on Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie and Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert.]

 

Lancaster, Guy (2024) "'God loves you nearly as much as I do': Toward a Poetics of Natality in Maureen Bronson's Delta Pearl, a 1989 Harlequin Historical Romance.' Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies 55.1:27–39. [Abstract here.]

RWA: New Award, New Bankruptcy Filing

I haven't been following the Romance Writers of America's activities closely since the 2019 implosion (documented in detail on this blog, under the tag RWA, but also summarised more briefly here and here) and a brief return with the 2021 awards fiasco (again, documented on this blog, but also summarised more briefly here). However, today there were a couple of items of news concerning the RWA.

The first involved a change to their main award. An Internet Archive capture of 25 February outlines a

a significant development regarding THE VIVIAN® Award. With the encouragement of the award’s namesake, Vivian Stephens, the RWA Board of Directors has approved a new name for the published author’s contest – the Diamond Heart Award. The Board is excited about the positive impact this change will have as we continue to celebrate the extraordinary richness and variety of our genre. This decision reflects RWA’s dedication to fostering an environment that embraces the diverse voices and experiences within our romance writing family.

While this award undergoes a transformation, Vivian Stephens' name will remain closely tied to our community. Her legacy will continue to be honored through the dedicated RWA industry service award, recognizing her enduring contributions to our shared journey.

That page has been updated since then (and I've saved it the way it looks today here). The judges should have completed their training and "Wednesday, June 5, 2024 - The contest opens at 11 a.m."

However, it seems that today (29 May 2024) the RWA filed for bankruptcy. I haven't seen the details but Courtney Milan posted the following screenshot:

[Subsequently, predominantly due to disputes concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues between some members of a prior RWA board and others in the larger romance writing community, membership decreased to approximately 3,000. Due to COVID concerns, the Debtor held its annual conference virtually in 2020 and 2021, and subsequently its membership reduced further. RWA was able to postpone its obligations to the respective Conference Centers these two years by agreeing to add two future years to the applicable Conference Centre Contract to 2028.]

Which, as has been pointed out, rather skates over the details of how and why Courtney Milan was treated very badly by the organisation.

If anyone has more in-depth knowledge of the situation, please do leave a comment!

[Edited to add:

Here's an article about the situation in Bloomberg Law.

Here's a post from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books which explains in rage and detail why the RWA's wording of their excuse is symptomatic of the very reasons the RWA is in this position.

And a similarly righteously angry, and also very detailed, post, at Her Hands My Hands.

The Guardian takes a closer look at the consequences of bankruptcy and pointedly concludes that

As the RWA has struggled, other romance organizations that explicitly prioritize diversity have grown. The Steamy Lit conference, first held in 2023, focuses on creating a welcoming environment for romance readers and writers of color, founder Melissa Saavedra said. An estimated 1,900 people are expected to attend its August conference this year.

The Guardian article states that "Reuters contributed reporting" which presumably refers to this article by Reuters, which begins with some cliches about the genre.]

CFP (on Sarah J. Maas), and lots of new publications (emotions, vasectomies, comics, deposit libraries, aro-ace romance, dance history)

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies has put out a call for papers for a

Special Issue: Sarah J. Maas

Millions of adolescent and adult readers alike have been drawn to Sarah J. Maas’s YA fantasy-romance series for their representations of empowered, embattled young women, their immersive fantasy worlds, and especially their romance narratives. From the Throne of Glass  (2012-18) and A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015-21) books to Crescent City (2020-24), her current series-in-progress, Maas has become wildly popular for the complex romantic and sexual relationships she portrays. The Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) seeks articles for a special issue focused on Maas’s fiction. These articles may focus on any of Maas’s works and may take a variety of disciplinary approaches.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Intersections of romance and politics, including connections between sexual agency and political agency in Maas’s fiction
• How Maas’s work engages with feminism and/or postfeminism
• Portrayals of or discourses on assault, trauma, and/or PTSD in Maas’s fiction and romance as trauma narrative
• Maas’s adaptation of fairy tales in her romance narratives
• Representations of sex and sexuality in Maas’s work
• Portrayals of gender in Maas’s work
• Maas’s engagement with traditional romance-genre tropes
• Renderings of adolescence and adult-youth power dynamics in romantic pairings and other relationships in Maas’s fiction
• Maas’s portrayal of LGBTQ+ or queer romantic relationships
• Class structures/dynamics and how they shape romance in Maas’s work

More details about this can be found here.

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Eirini Arvanitaki's Emotionality: Heterosexual Love and Emotional Development in Popular Romance was published by Routledge in May 2024. It

focuses on the projections of romantic love and its progression in a selection of popular romance novels and identifies an innovation within the genre’s formula and structure. Taking into account Giddens’s notion of ‘confluent’ love, this book argues that two forms of love exist within these texts: romantic and confluent love. The analysis of these love variants suggests that a continuum emerges which signifies the complexity but also the formation and progressive nature of the protagonists’ love relationships. This continuum is divided into three stages: the pre-personal, semi-personal and personal. The first phase connotes the introduction of the protagonists and describes the sexual attraction they experience for each other. The second phase refers to the initiation of the sexual interaction of the heroine and hero without any emotional involvement. The third and final phase begins when emotions such as jealousy, shame/guilt, anger, and self-sacrifice are awakened and acknowledged.

Allan, Jonathan A. (2024) '“Condoms Break. Birth Control Fails.” Heroes in the Procreative Realm and Jessica Scott’s “Anything for You”'. Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

Cho, H., Adkins, D., da Silva Santos, D., Long, A.K. (2024). "Platform, Visuals, and Sound: Webtoon’s Immersive Romance Reading Engagement." In: Sserwanga, I., et al. Wisdom, Well-Being, Win-Win. iConference 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14597. Springer, Cham. [More details here.]

Deane, Katie (2024). Romance Self-Publishing and UK Legal Deposit. British Library Research Repository.

Lienhard, Alissa (2024). "“I’ll Call it Platonic Magic”: Queer Joy, Metafiction, and Aro-Ace Autofictional Selves in Alice Oseman’s Loveless." In Progress: A Graduate Journal of North American Studies 2.1:59-72.

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And finally, although this is not a publication about romance, Sonia Gollance, advertising her new book  It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity, has written a post about some of what you could expect to find if there were more historical romances written about Jewish protagonists. https://jwa.org/blog/scandalous-dance-scenes-romance-plots-and-jewish-literary-modernity

 

New Publications: Genre Norms, Publishing and Creators

Green, Steff (2024). "More schlongs, more cats." Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child-adjacent. Ed. Kathryn Van Beek, Alie Benge, Lil O'Brien. Aukland: Massey University Press. [On the near-ubiquity of babies in the HEA. Excerpt here.]

 

Griffiths, David (2023). Hearing Ghosts: Writing a Low Fantasy YA Gothic Fiction for young adult males. PhD in Creative Writing, Manchester Metropolitan University.

McInnis, Lauren (2024). Filing The Serial Numbers Off: The Role Of The Author In Fanfiction Published As Original FictionFanfiction Published As Original Fiction. Master of Arts dissertation, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Parisot, Eric (2024). Jane Austen and Vampires: Love, Sex and Immortality in the New Millennium. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. [More details here, and excerpt here.]

Pierre-Robertson, Petronetta (2023). "Librarian as Creator." Caribbean Library Journal 7:1-16.

Sabo, Oana (2024). “Translingualism 2.0.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 28.2: 302-316. [Links, and selected quotes from the section on romance, here.]

 

New Publications: Minotaurs and Pornography; HFNs and HEAs without marriage; Bridgerton

There are two new articles out from the Journal of Popular Romance Studies and since one of them is by me, I'm going to show immense bias and make this a very short list instead of waiting for more new publications, and I'm also going to list my article first.

Vivanco, Laura (2024). “Feeling Judged: Reflections on Pornography and Romance from a Minotaur Milking Farm.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

I don't have any other scholarship in progress, which is a somewhat strange feeling. I'm still updating the Romance Scholarship Database, though, and every so often I come across items from previous years which I've missed. If you know of something that isn't in the database and which should be, please do let me know!

Kies, Bridget (2024). “Saying ‘I Don’t’: Queer Romance in the Post–Marriage Equality World.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

Reese, Tracy H.Z. (2024). "Beyond the Pale: Genre, Race, and Intersectional Feminist Tensions in Bridgerton." Adapting Bridgerton: Essays on the Netflix Show in Context. Edited by Valerie Estelle Frankel. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. 9-21. [See via Google Books here.]

 

A new book (on Ethel M. Dell) and other new publications

Riding The Tosh Horse: Ethel M. Dell, A Written Life by David Tanner, published by Brown Dog Books:

The largely forgotten romantic novelist Ethel M. Dell (1881-1939) published alongside Rudyard Kipling and other literary giants but was vilified by George Orwell and P.G. Wodehouse among many. Ethel was a recluse, and actively avoided marketing herself as a personality in any way, but her formula was successful. She reached a very large audience publishing 98 titles and earning, at the height of her career, about £4M annually in today’s values. Her plots included a popular and heady mix of heterosexual, implicit same-sex relationships, sexual deviances, gratuitous violence, death and exoticised notions of Empire and masculinity. The veneer of Ethel’s plots was used to communicate her philosophies, her views on life and on her family.

Although being publishing alongside literary giants she did not receive establishment acceptance because of her style and no doubt envy of her substantial earnings. With an escapist and non-literary appeal to a lower middle class reader universe Ethel used a very successful multi-media marketing strategy with magazine serialisation, hard copy books, film, theatre and radio to reach this audience in the UK, the United States, Europe and the British colonies.

A forerunner to Mills and Boon’s success Ethel was very influential in setting the scene for mass market romantic fiction. Barbara Cartland stated that Ethel was her greatest influence.

Befeler, Paige (2022), LGBTQ(NA), Queer New Adult Fiction: The Emergence of a New Genre and Its Impact on the LGBTQIA+ Community. Thesis for Honors in Comparative Literary Studies, Wellesley College.

 

Kluger, Johanna (2024). "'On Thursdays We Shoot': Guns and Gender Binaries in Regency Romance Novels". Ladies in Arms: Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture. Ed. Teresa Hiergeist and Stefanie Schäfer, transcript verlag. 163-179. [The whole volume is available for free at the link given.]

 

Kluger, Johanna (2024). "Post-Trump masculinity in popular romance novels." Neohelicon. Online First. Open access.

 

Parnell, Claire (2023). "Algospeak and algo-design in platformed book publishing: Revolutionary creative tactics in digital paratext to circumvent content moderation." Paper presented at AoIR2023: The 24th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Philadelphia, PA, USA: AoIR. 

 

Pérez-Fernández, Irene (2024). "Black British love matters: Asserting the transformative power of love in Bolu Babalola’s Love in Colour: Mythical Tales Around the World Retold". Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Online First. Open access.

Ripoll Fonollar, Mariana (2023). Wording deeds: the figure of the suffragette in contemporary british fiction, Universitat de les Illes Balears. [This is a thesis which is not freely available. The abstract can be found here.]

Past Conference Videos, Current Exhibition Feedback and New Publications

Videos are now freely available of some of the events from last year's Popular Romance Fiction: The Literature of Hope conference, held at Yale University.

https://romancefictionconference.yale.edu/gallery/popular-romance-fiction-literature-hope-conference-photos-and-video

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Andrea Martucci's Shelf Love podcast episode about this exhibition of John Ennis's art for romance covers is available here: https://shelflovepodcast.com/episodes/season-2/episode-153/covering-romance-john-enniss-art-thoughts-on-fandom

Smart Bitch Sarah's feedback (including lots of photos) on the exhibition can be found here: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2024/02/covering-romance-romance-novel-cover-art-by-john-ennis/

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And here are the new publications:

Burge, Amy, Jodi McAlister and Charlotte Ireland (2024). '“Prince Charming with an Erection”: The Sensational Pleasures of the Bonkbuster.' Contemporary Women's Writing https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpae002 [This shows how bonkbusters are not romance.]

Johnson, Jacqueline E. (2024) "Lusting out loud: racialized aurality, podcast intimacy, and the uses of thirst". Communication, Culture and Critique. Online First. [Excerpt and details here. As I mentioned over on BlueSky, the focus on "the expansive middle" reminded me of Athena Bellas and Jodi McAlister 's (non-paywalled) recent article on audio erotica. So I wondered if such a focus might have something to do with an audio experience? And/or a difference between what readers/listeners seek from erotica vs. romance fiction? Jodi suggested it could be to do with the length of time available and that the episodes could be thought of as 'a little slice of life from what An Goris calls the "post-HEA"'.]

 

Markova, M. V. (2024). "Georgette Heyer, history, and historical fiction." Voprosy literatury 1:198-203. [This is written in Russian, and in any case I could not access the pdf from https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2024-1-198-203.]

Morden, Christina (2023). Innovations in Romance Novel Distribution at Harlequin, Sourcebooks, and Raincoast Books. Master of Publishing, Simon Fraser University. 

 

Pates, Giuliana (2023). "Reading Practices and Gender Politicization: How do Young Argentinean Women Read Romantic Novels." Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 9.1:1–26. [This is in Spanish.]

Spencer, L. (2024). '“Walk like a chameleon”: Reflecting on my teaching journey at a South African university'. Educare, (1), 192–215. https://doi.org/10.24834/educare.2024.1.1093 [Dr Lynda Gichanda Spencer, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Literary Studies in English at Rhodes University, discussed her teaching of African romance fiction as part of a panel at the IASPR 2020 conference. There are a couple of paragraphs about her 2019 third-year elective course titled Global Chick-Lit or Trans-Global Literature? Re-reading Contemporary Women’s Fiction in this online paper, discussing how she asked students to compare Harlequin Mills & Boon romances with romances by African publishers.]

The Romance Wikithon: Valentine's Day Edition

IASPR is holding a Valentine's Day (well, Wednesday 14 February for some time zones) Romance Wikithon, with training from Amy Burge! It's not just for romance scholars: readers have lots of expertise to share too! Here's the description that was shared with those of us on the IASPR Discord group:

Join us, this Valentines Day, to share our expertise as romance scholars [and readers] and increase the representation of romance on Wikipedia! Open to all. 

This 90-minute session will be practical and informal. It is aimed at those who have never edited Wikipedia before. Training and guidance will be given. Recommended for those who might be interested in using Wikipedia as part of teaching, for those who are interested in learning more about how to edit Wikipedia, and for anyone who would like to make positive change in the world! The session will be facilitated by Dr Amy Burge, who has run editathons at the University of Cardiff, and has used Wikipedia for assessment with students.

Here's the signup page.

The timezone information in the graphic says:

Wednesday 14th February        London         20:00-21:30
                                                  Chicago        14:00-15.30
Thursday 15th February           Melbourne    07:00-08:30 

[Edited to add: Here are the details on the IASPR website, which I've only just seen.]

Bad Romance Data, Monsters and New Publications

The data does NOT exist to support the statement that romance is a billion dollar industry. Quite frankly, the data does not exist to make any sweeping statements about the size of the popular romance genre market.

So says Andrea Martucci of the Shelf Love podcast, who's been taking a hard look at the "popular romance genre market data between 1972 and today" and presented her "research on 'Bad Romance Data' at the 2023 International Association for the Study of Popular Romance conference." You can read her analysis and conclusions here (and it's archived here).

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Also via Andrea (but this time not by her), comes a call for participants:

Whether you're solely into humans or a monster romance enthusiast, I'd love for you to take part in my survey. I'm a graduate student doing my thesis on whether or not monster attraction could be explained through evolutionary anthropology.

The survey will be available from January 9, 2024, to March 12, 20204, and it will take about 20 to 30 minutes to complete (although some people have finished it in as little as 12 minutes). It's completely anonymous and only requires that you be at least 18 years old to participate.

Andrea spotted it on Reddit but there's also a more formal announcement giving details of the research on the Research Study Consent Form to be found at the website of California State University, Fullerton.

The research is being "carried out by Phoebe Santillan, under the guidance of Dr. Elizabeth Pillsworth" and

The purpose of this research study is to gather information on people who are attracted to fictional monsters. You are being asked to participate in this study because any and all data is valuable at this stage within the research process. Attraction to fictional monsters is not required to participate in this study.

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And here's a short list of new publications:

Allen, Amanda K. (2024) "Ruling the Court: Reflections on Midcentury Junior Novel Romances." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.

Robinson, Rachel (2023). Reading and writing dogs in popular romance fiction, PhD, University of Tasmania. [Only the abstract is currently available.]

 

Warnaar, Karin (2023). "Dresses and Drapery: The Material Essie Summers." Scope: Contemporary Research Topics art & design 25:91-96. [Full pdf available for download at the link provided and, as a bonus, here's a link to a 2018 Otago Daily Times article about Essie Summers' life and work which Warnaar cites.]

Ya’u, Mohammed Sani, Sabariah Md Rashid, Afida Mohamad Ali and Hardev Kaur Jujar Singh (2023). "Semantic Extensions of Hausa Visual and Auditory Perception Verbs gani and ji in Romance Fiction." Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities 31.4:1441-1464.