Call for Papers: Northeast Popular Culture Association virtual conference

NORTHEAST POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION, Virtual, October 9 to October 11, 2025
AREA: ROMANCE/POPULAR ROMANCE FICTION

Deadline: Tuesday, July 15th by 5pm EST

Contact email: Wendy Wagner wwagner@jwu.edu

The Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will host its 2025 annual conference this fall as a virtual conference from Thursday, October 9th, to Saturday, October 11th, 2025.

We are seeking paper proposals on the topic of Romance/Popular Romance Fiction for its annual conference.

We welcome a wide variety of papers related to romance and popular romance fiction. Possible approaches can include cultural studies, narrative analysis, issues of representation , production and dissemination of romance fiction, audience studies, the public uses of romance fiction/s, and more.

We are also interested in forming panels around some of the following topics:

· Romance and fanfiction – fandom as a training ground for developing romance writers

· The Romance industry and social media marketing

· Romance re-imagining itself – How does contemporary romance fiction take on and transform its own genre? How does it re-make the “pirate romance,” the “arranged marriage” trope, fairy tales and mythological re-tellings?

· Romance fiction in languages other than English

· Romance and disabilty

More information here.

New Publication: "Still Reading Romance: Identity and Engagement with Popular Romance Fiction"

 

Still Reading Romance: Identity and Engagement with Popular Romance Fiction

Edited by Josefine Smith and Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman

This edited volume explores multiple issues in romance fiction, based on survey data from real romance readers. An updated version of Janice Radway’s influential survey looking at romance readers in the early 1980s, this time scholars explore romance readers’ habits and attitudes in the twenty-first century. Each contributor in this volume uses the same survey data to make unique statements about gender, intersectionality, popular fiction, and popular culture. By using a common data set but approaching it from different perspectives, this unique volume is able to apply multiple methodologies to the same subject.

This was due in April from Rowman & Littlefield but I didn't see any information about it on Google Books so I assumed it had been delayed. It probably wasn't, because although there's still not a lot of information out about it, it has indeed been published.

The full abstract can be found on the publisher's website (Rowman & Littlefield has been taken over by Bloomsbury, so although it was published by R&L, the details are on the Bloomsbury site here).

Luckily Jonathan Allan has now received a copy and was able to send me images of the contents pages, so I'll include the titles of the articles below:

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Jacqueline Burgess and Gaja Kolodziej - "Re-Reading Romance: Exploring Practitioner, Reader, and Industry Perceptions of the Genre"

Ayşegül Rigato - "From Private to Public: #Bookstagram as a Safe Space for Romance Readers"

Josefine Smith - "Romance Readers' Perceptions of New Adult Fiction"

Natalie Duvall and Matt Duvall - "Which Women Want What?: The Shifting Demographics and Perspectives of Romance Readers"

Jessica Caravaggio - "Social Media, Critical Analysis, and Feminist Action: Popular YA's Role in Disseminating Theory Online"

Joann Stout - "Beyond the Bodice Ripper: Why Erotic Romance is Feminist Literature" 93-110

Lise Shapiro Sanders - "Reading Historical Romance/Reading Romance Historically"

Anna Michelson - "Romance Reading as a Social Activity"

Andrea Barra - "Escaping the Negativity of "Escapism": Rethinking Romance Reader Notions of Why They Read"

Jessica M. W. Kratzer - "Love, Romance, Sex, and Happily Ever After: A Feminist Exploration of Women who Read Romance Novels"

Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman - "Coming of Age and Coming Out: The Intersection of New Adult and Queer Romance"

Trinidad Linares - "Getting Love Out of the Margins: Race, Disability, Sexuality, and the Idea of a Happy After for Marginalized People"

Christina M. Babu - "Retellings and Re-readings - Romance, Representation, and Reimaginations in Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (2022)"

Louise Schulmann-Darsy - "Mr. Darcy as the Perfect Book Boyfriend, or the Impact of BookTok on Male Characters in Romance Books"

Sara Partin and Josefine Smith - "Reading Romance and Erotic Literacy"