Call for Papers: Sports Romance

From JPRS:

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is calling for papers for its special issue on Sport Romance.

Narratives intertwining sport culture with popular romance have steadily grown in popularity throughout the last fifty years, spiking most recently with the release of streaming drama Heated Rivalry, adapted from the novels of Rachel Reid. Increasingly, popular romance set against the backdrop of elite athleticism and featuring one, if not two or more, professional athletes, have become a substantial facet of the romance literary and media landscape. Despite the significant success of this subgenre of popular romance, scholarly investigations have thus far been limited. This special issue therefore is devoted to igniting wide-ranging, exploratory and original discussion on the topic of sport romance.

Adopting an expansive definition of sport and leisure, these articles may consider sports, games and pastimes ranging from international leagues to community clubs to sports that push the limit of the term such as autoracing, gaming and gambling, as represented in romance fiction, film and TV, fanfic and other forms of transformative culture and media. We invite submissions from a broad range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts, including but not limited to: cultural studies, literary studies, gender studies, publishing studies, history, celebrity studies, sports studies and fan studies.

Topics of interest may include but are not limited to:

• Sports in romance narratives in a variety of media, including but not limited to: genre fiction, memoir, screen media, music, or in the teaching of these media.
• The significance of self-publishing in contemporary sport romance
• The relationship between sport fan communities, romance fan communities and sport romance fiction
• ‘BookTok’ and the impact of sport romance fan behaviour on athletes
• Precursors to contemporary sport romance such as Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles and Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Chicago Stars
• Portrayals of gender difference and subversion in sport romance
• Class, wealth and celebrity in sport romance
• Queer themes and homophobia within sport culture as explored in sport romance
• Young Adult sport romance and the pedagogical interventions endeavoured by sport romance in young people’s physical activity

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and bios of no more than 100 words to Atlanta Tsiaoukkas (at839@cam.ac.uk) by 31st May 2026. Full articles of between 5,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography, will be due by 1 December 2026. Please note that all research articles submitted to this special issue of JPRS will undergo peer review via a double blind, pre-publication peer review policy.

Scholar Seeking Romance Podcast Listeners

Survey on Podcasts about Romance Fiction

Study Title: Multimodal Playgrounds: Democratizing Romance Readership through Romance Fiction Podcast Communities
Principal Investigator: Dr. Precie A. Schroyer, Northampton Community College

You are being asked to take part in a research study on podcasts about romance fiction. 

 

Purpose The purpose of this research project is to examine the popularity of podcasts about romance fiction and how they may affect romance readership engagement. Your participation involves completing an anonymous online survey regarding your experiences with listening to and/or watching such podcasts.

 

More details here.  

New Publications: Autism, Book Selling, Dark Romance, Ethnicity, Happiness, History, Readers

Bogaert, Anthony F.,  Jessie E. Hernder and , Jessica R. Johnson (2026). "Who “Feels Sexy” in the Google Books Corpus? Text-Mining Evidence for Gender Differences in Object of Desire Self-Consciousness." Archives of Sexual Behavior. [Abstract here.]

Datta, Sreepurna (2026). "Around the world on Amazon: Locating diasporic Indian romance novels published by Harlequin Mills & Boon." Literature, Critique, and Empire Today.

Deane,  Katie (2026). "Dark romance: an introduction." Porn Studies.

Eimannsberger, Angelina (2026). "The Romance Shop Around the Corner: How Women Readers Created a New Kind of Independent Bookstore." The New Americanist 4.1-2.  [Abstract here.] 

Grant, Ania (2025). Evolution, Feminism, and Romantic Fiction: From Mr. Darcy to Mr. Big London: Routledge. [Abstract here.]

Handley-Cousins, Sarah (2026). "Love Is a Battlefield: Civil War Memory in Modern Romance Novels." They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America. Ed. John M. Kinder and Jennifer M. Murray. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 152-169. [Excerpt here.]

Majidi, Nikki (2026) "Fast Fiction": Booktok, Artificial Intelligence, and the Profit-driven Reinvention of the Romance Genre. Undergraduate Dissertation, California State University, Long Beach.

 

Miller, Jessica (2026). ""I Shall Be Very Happy, Indeed": The Meanings of Happiness in Bridgerton" Bridgerton and Philosophy: Dukes, Debutantes, and Deep Questions . Ed. Jessica Miller. Wiley. [This article is free online. The remained of the volume is not. I have more details about that volume here. It won't be available until March.]

 

Musiał-Pudełko, Aleksandra (2026) "'You and Me and History': Queer Romance and Liberal Fantasy in Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue." Erotic Discourses in History, Culture and the Arts. Ed. Aleksandra Musiał-Pudełko, Nina Augustynowicz, Agnieszka Podruczna. New York: Routledge. [Abstract here.]

 

Niebergall, Chelsee M. (2026) "Constructing Hybrid Identities: Cultural Negotiation and Belonging in Uzma Jalaluddin's Ayesha at Last," CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal: Vol. 17: No. 2, Article 16.

 

Parnell, Claire (2025). "The Politics of Algorithmic Hyper(in)visibility: BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and Erotic Romance Fiction on Amazon." Érudit 16.2: 1–28.

 

Segura Candado, Leyre (2025). Love Beyond Conventions: Contemporary Romance and the Representation of Non-Normative Bodies. Undergraduate Dissertation, Universidad de Zaragoza.

 

Smith, Evelyn (2025). Correlations Between Parasocial Tendencies and Self-Esteem Among Romance Readers. Honors thesis, Columbus State University.

 

Vargová, Veronika (2025). "‘What will you do with yourself when you grasp that your mind is only different, not deranged?’: Madness and Neurodivergent Heroes in Historical Romance Novels." The Journal of Historical Fictions 6.1:45-66.

 

Vargová, Veronika (2025). Happily Ever After, Differently: Reimagining Autism and Intimacy in Popular Romance Novels. PhD, Masaryk University.