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.