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.