New Publications: Race, Rape, and Romance in Maltese Libraries

Maybe I've simplified things a little in the title of the post due to the allure of alliteration. But there's definitely a lot in these recent publications about race/ethnicity and racism.

As always, if there's a hyperlink in the title, that means it's freely accessible online.

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Abdullah-Poulos, Layla (2023) "Sisters, Skanks, and Jezebels: American Muslim Fiction and the Other Woman." The Bloomsbury Handbook of Muslims and Popular Culture. Ed. Hussein Rashid and Kristian Petersen. London: Bloomsbury. 205-214. [Excerpt here.]

Derbyshire, Valerie Grace (2023). “ ‘Do you think I haven’t paid for what I did?’: Rape in the Mills & Boon Romantic Novels of Penny Jordan.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 12. 

Garcia, Christina (2023). The Race of Publishing: The Troubling Whiteness in Publishing and the Forces Pushing Back. Master of Arts in English, Texas Christian University.

Henderson, Aneeka Ayanna (2024). "Popular Romance and Literary Undergrounds." The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary African American Literature. Ed. Yogita Goyal. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 164-179. [Excerpt]

Hutter, Verena (2023). "Fire, Savannah, and Passion: The New Africa Novel and the Construction of White Femininity." Gender and German Colonialism: Intimacies, Accountabilities, Intersections. Ed. Chunjie Zhang and Elisabeth Krimmer. New York: Routledge. [See https://rsdb.vivanco.me.uk/bibliography/fire-savannah-and-passion-new-africa-novel-and-construction-white-femininity for more details.]

Kamblé, Jayashree (2023). “Romancing the University: BIPOC Scholars in Romance Novels in the 1980s and Now.” Esferas Literarias 6: 39-55.

Phumithammarat, Nanphatchaon (2023). The Cultural politics of Chinese -Thai Identities in Ethnic Romance Novels by Female Authors. PhD thesis, Silpakorn University.

Posti, Piia K. (2024). “‘I Get to Exist as a Black Person in the World’: Bridgerton as Speculative Romance and Alternate History on Screen.” History and Speculative Fiction. Ed. John L. Hennessey. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. [The whole book is available for free since it's open access.]

Limond, Verity. (2023) "‘The door is open to everyone’: The public libraries of Gozo." Omertaa, Journal for applied anthropology. 745-754.

What's On: Talks (Black Love Matters and Female Characters)

The essay collection Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters, edited by Jessica P. Pryde is now available. The essays are written by authors, readers, academics (the categories are not exclusive, of course).

A discussion with "with special guests editor and librarian Jessica Pryde, best-selling author Beverly Jenkins, and host of Romance Ever After Allie Parker" is being held on 22 February.

More details here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rCsTiAqURGaKw93KtgxDug

The Midlands Network of Popular Culture "are delighted that Dr Francesca Pierini will be joining us from the University of Basel on the 11th February to give a presentation on 'Female Characters in the Modern and Contemporary Anglophone Romance Novel'":

This presentation focuses on a reasoned discussion of the female protagonists of the popular romance narratives [...]. The main goal is familiarizing students with the definitions, development, and cultural significance of popular romance fiction through a parallel exploration of the novels’ heroines. The talk will touch upon themes such as: the evolution of the female character in romance novels, educating students on the waves of scholarship on romance fiction, and exploring and problematizing the complex relationship between popular literature and literary scholarship.  

More details here.

What's On: Talks (on Industry Norms, Black Romance, Heyer)

Duke University's course on romance, UNSUITABLE (with an associated blog and events) has announced that its 2022 season begins

on Friday, January 21st [...] with author Deborah Fletcher Mello who will talk with us about What Characterizes a Romance Novel? Negotiating Industry Norms and Expectations.

All are welcome! Preregister here. UNSUITABLE events are free and open to the public.

That's via Zoom.

On February 26th, also online, there will be a

Black Romance Master Class. Sponsored by the Center for Black Diaspora.

"Those Purple Hands Really Intrigues Me:" Beverly Jenkins' Indigo 

The aim of this master class is to offer a pedagogical and scholarly approach to reading and teaching Black Romance fiction, specificially, historical Black romance novels. What this class will offer is a model, using Indigo as the class text, for teaching the literariness of novel, its continuity with the history of the romance genre, and the importance of reassessing the teaching of and writing about Black romance, and the romance genre in general. What the course will offer Black romance readers, scholars, and teachers is a critical approach easily adapted to anti-racist pedagogy and scholarly writing about romance.

The class is being led by Dr Margo Hendricks and you can register here.

On the topic of Black romance, I was interested to see that Harlequin have now produced a page to spotlight their romances by Black authors (most seem to be "Black romance," though some may not be, due to having one or more non-Black protagonist): https://www.harlequin.com/shop/pages/black-romance-stories.html They seem to be appearing in a wide range of lines: Special Edition, Presents, Desire, Intrigue, Romantic Suspense, Medical Romance, Romance, Heartwarming, Historical and ebook-only imprints.

Dr Sam Hirst has released a round-table conversation with KJ Charles,  Rose Lerner, Cat Sebastian and Olivia Waite which was part of a recent conference on Heyer:

New publications: topics covered include Lovecraft, sexual orientation, fatness, race, identity, and religion

This will be the last of my new publication lists for 2021. Articles about romance have been continuing to appear (see below). This has also been a busy year for academic books on romance, and two more have been published just before the end of 2021. Although I haven't read either of them yet, I've collaborated with many of the authors of the essay collection and read an earlier version of the other.

Discursos e Identidades en la Ficción Romántica: Visiones Anglófonas de Madeira y Canarias / Discourses and Identities in Romance Fiction: Anglophone Visions from Madeira and the Canaries is a bilingual essay collection (the same essays appear first in Spanish and then in English) edited by María Isabel González-Cruz. There is also a section related to teaching romance fiction. A list of the contents, along with topic tags, can be found in the Romance Scholarship Database. Excerpts are available from Vernon Press and Google Books.

Fernández Rodríguez, Carolina (2021). American Quaker Romances: Building the Myth of the White Christian Nation. Valencia : Universidad de Valencia.

With the rise in recent years of the Christian romance market, dominated by American Evangelical companies, there has been a renewed interest in fictional Quakers. In the historical Quaker romances analyzed in this book, Quaker heroines often devote time to spiritual considerations, advocate the sanctity of marriage and promote traditional family values. However, their concern with social justice also leads them to engage in subversive behavior and to question the status quo, as illustrated by heroines who are active on the Underground Railroad or are seen organizing the Seneca Falls convention. Though relatively liberal in terms of gender, Quaker romances are considerably less progressive when it comes to race relations.

Thus, they reflect America's conflicted relationship with its history of race and gender abuse, and the country's tendency to both resist and advocate social change. Ultimately, Quaker romances reinforce the myth of America as a White and Christian nation, here embodied by the Quaker heroine, the all-powerful savior who rescues Native Americans, African Americans and Jews while conquering the hero's heart.

Here are links to: the publisher's website; an excerpt on Google Books; Amazon (ebook and paperback)

Hefner, Brooks E. (2021). Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Excerpt available via Google Books. See in particular Chapter 2, "Romancing the Race: The Politics of Black Love Stories."]

Hernandez-Knight, Bianca (2021). "Race and Racism in Austen Spaces: Jane Austen and Regency Romance's Racist Legacy." ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 11.2.

Johnson, Brian (2022). "Weird Bedfellows: H. P. Lovecraft, m/m Romance, and the New Queer Families of Jordan L. Hawk's Whyborne & Griffin Series." Lovecraft in the 21st Century: Dead, But Still Dreaming. Ed. Antonio Alcala Gonzalez, Carl H. Sederholm. New York: Routledge. [Abstract]

Khumwongdee, Yanisa (2021). Reading and Rewriting Fat Romance: A Study of Twenty-First Century Thai and US Fat Romance Novels. PhD thesis, University of York. [Abstract] 

Moolla, F. Fiona (2021). "Her Heart Lies at the Feet of the Mother: Transformations of the Romance Plot in Leila Aboulela’s Minaret." African Journal of Gender and Religion 27.2:1-21.

Pierre, Zakiya (2021). Browsing in nuances: Using ethnographic research to design for the experience of browsing. Bachelor's thesis, Malmö University.

Pradhan, Anil (2021). "The literary field of queer cultural production in contemporary India: considering popular queer texts via Bourdieu." Runas: Journal of Education & Culture 2.4.

Weimer, Christopher (2021). "Romancing Weird Fiction: Lovecraftian Reinscriptions in Jordan L. Hawk's Whyborne and Griffin." Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies 8.1:61-76. [Download the whole issue.]

 

New Publications: Genre Definitions, Publishing Contexts and more

Please note that Jodi McAlister's book on New Adult Fiction is available for free (to read online and/or download as a pdf) only until 8 November 2021.

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Awad, Amal (2021). “Desert dreamings and sheikh-lit.” Meanjin 80.3: 114-118.

Cuthbert, Kate (2021). "The Australian Digital Publishing Bubble, 2012-2016: An Insider Perspective." Post-Digital Book Cultures: Australian Perspectives. Ed. Alexandra Dane and Millicent Weber. Monash University Publishing. 115-138.

McAlister, Jodi (2021). New Adult Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Novakova, Iva (2021). "Les motifs phraséologiques pour distinguer les genres littéraires. Sur l’exemple des motifs de la communication verbale et non verbale." Kalbotyra 74:160–181.

Ntelia, Renata Elizabetta (2021). "How Damsels Love: The Transgressive Pleasure of Romance." New Horizons in English Studies 6: 146-159.

Parnell, Claire (2021). “Independent Authors’ Dependence on Big Tech: Categorization and Governance of Authors Of Color on Amazon.” AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research.

Pritchard, Jamee Nicole (2021). That 90's Kind of Love: the Rise of African American Romance Novels in Traditional Romance Publishing. Master of Arts Dissertation at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee embargoed until 2023.

Seifrit, Rachel Joy (2021). Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Sexuality and Gender Exploration in Contemporary Slash Fanfiction. M.A. English, Kutztown University.

Valovirta, Elina (2021). "Repeated Pleasure: Reading the Threesome Ménage Romance as Digital Literature." Powerful Prose: How Textual Features Impact Readers.  Ed. R. L. Victoria Pöhls and Mariane Utudji. transcript Verlag. 45-61.

Videos: Black Romance and (in Spanish) an Introduction to Romance

As mentioned in the JPRS newsletter [you can sign up to it here], there are now videos available on YouTube of both

a roundtable discussion, Black Romance: Past, Present, Future, that was held on September 17, 2021. Moderated by Dr. Margo Hendricks, panelists included Dr. Piper Huguley, Dr. Katrina (Nicole) Jackson, Tatianna Richardson, and Dr. Yakini Etheridge. This roundtable can now be viewed here.

and

Black Romance Masterclass, was held on September 18, 2021, and was led by author and scholar, Dr. Margo Hendricks on the creative process of writing a romance novel. It also looked at black romance and pedagogy, as well as black romance and scholarship. This masterclass can now be viewed here.

An introductory lecture on romance, given in Spanish by Dr. Nattie Golubov, can be found below. The slides start at around 5 minutes into the video. 

Forthcoming Events (Black Romance and Concepts in Popular Genre Fiction) and some Articles/Posts

On 17 September the Center for Black Diaspora at DePaul University is hosting

Black Romance: Past, Present, and Future

Moderator: Dr. Margo Hendricks

Four panelists:

• Dr. Piper Huguley,
• Dr. Katrina (Nicole) Jackson,
• Tatianna Richardson,
• Dr. Yakini Etheridge,

This round-table brings together romance writers, scholars, editors, readers, and podcasters to discuss their views on the past, present, and future of Black Romance in the United States.

Sponsoring Institutions:

Center for Black Diaspora, DePaul University

Center for Contemporary Literature and Culture, University of Birmingham

International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.

You can sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-romance-past-present-and-future-tickets-167463563025

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Call for Papers: Concepts in Popular Genre Fiction

Deakin University, 6-8 December 2021

Convenors: Dr Jodi McAlister and Dr Helen Young

This virtual symposium, to be held 6-8 December through Deakin University as part of the Literature and its Readers research network, seeks to open up different sorts of questions, in order to consider other ways of examining, analysing, and utilising popular genre fiction. Specifically, we seek papers exploring concepts, ideas, and motifs, and the role that they play in popular genre/s.

Submissions close on 31 August.

On Twitter it's been announced that:

The first of our keynote speakers will be Farah Mendlesohn (@effjayem). Farah is the author of several acclaimed books on popular genre fiction, including Rhetorics of Fantasy and Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction. Our second keynote speaker will be Jayashree Kamble (@prof_romance). Jayashree is currently the vice-president of @IASPR and the author of Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology. And finally, we will host a keynote panel by the research team from the Genre Worlds project, Lisa Fletcher (@lmfletcher72), Beth Driscoll (@Beth_driscoll) and Kim Wilkins. This fascinating project explores genre in 21st century Australian popular fiction.

More details here.

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Steve Ammidown's written an article titled “Romance Writers of America Rescind Award for LakotaGenocide Redemption Narrative” for Library Journal.

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Mary Lynne Nielsen interviewed veteran romance cover artist James Griffin about his work and changes in the industry. The interview can be found here and also at AAR.

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Charlotte wrote a series of posts about "paratexts." This one is about the different ways that authors market the selling points of their novels on Twitter, as compared to what appears on the books themselves: https://closereadingromance.com/2021/06/22/paratexts-part-three-the-art-of-the-one-click/

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KJ Charles wrote a post about obstacles in romance, illustrated with references to Alexis Hall's For Real:

But there’s a lot more obstacles than the obvious headliners.

Power imbalance is a big one. Where there’s any sort of difference between the characters there’s probably some sort of power imbalance, which can lead to uncertainty, insecurity, misunderstanding, resentment. Obvious areas for power imbalance are gender-related (including in queer relationships), and disparities in wealth, health, professional status, class, sexual experience, age, perceived attractiveness, perceived value as a person. It’s always worth thinking about these.

(For an entire book about power imbalance–across age, wealth, education, status, sexual experience, and class–Alexis Hall’s For Real traces a relationship between an older, authoritative, wealthy sub and a young, less secure, broke dom. It’s a masterclass in power imbalances going both ways, and the complexities of how they shift and seesaw.)

Congratulations to Jayashree Kamblé for Award to Work on BIPOC Authors and Editors

ACLS is thrilled to name 28 new @MellonFdn / ACLS Community College Faculty Fellows for 2021, recognizing exceptional faculty at community colleges and their contributions to scholarship, teaching, and their communities: https://t.co/wzIkYvjidF pic.twitter.com/kGTnkDRL6h

— ACLS (@ACLS1919) April 28, 2021

It's just been announced that Jayashree Kamblé has been awarded one of the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships for 2021 for this exciting project:

BIPOC Writers, Editors, and Novels: The Missing Chapters in the Story of Mass-Market Romance

The contributions of BIPOC authors and editors of mass-market romance have often existed on the fringes of the genre’s scholarship. This project centers these sidelined histories through archival research on interviews, reviews, and industry newsletters, as well as close readings of romance novels starring BIPOC, and authored and edited by BIPOC. The project identifies BIPOC progenitors of romance novels in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through two foci: African American editor Vivian Stephens, who sought out and nurtured Black romance, and publishers who either marginalized non-white romance writing or made it visible. Retrieving these biographies and novels fleshes out the history on BIPOC romance and disrupts this popular form’s seeming whiteness. As the genre now confronts its lack of diversity and role in normalizing bigotry, documenting BIPOC romance history shows how the industry contributed to our contemporary reactionary zeitgeist but also how it can combat it.

Jayashree is one of only "28 scholars [who] will each receive up to $40,000 to advance their respective projects, which significantly expand humanistic study and knowledge" (ACLS).

Congratulations, Jayashree!

Congratulations and Recent Publications

First of all, I'd like to congratulate the 2020 winners of the RWA Academic Research Grant. The

RWA Academic Grant Committee has recommended and the RWA Board of Directors has approved Dr. Julie E. Moody-Freeman, an Associate Professor in African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University, and Hannah E. Scupham, a doctoral student in Literature at the University of Kansas, as recipients of the 2021 RWA Academic Research Grant. 

and here are more details about the research for which they've received the grants:

‘Lift as We Climb’: Black Romance Writers, Social Justice, and Institution Building, Dr. Julie E. Moody-Freeman

Grant funds will be used to aid in her research that will examine black writers’ representations of racial uplift in which their romantic plots and produce one season of the Black Romance Podcast, which documents the history of the production and publication of Black Romance through Dr. Moody-Freeman’s conversations with writers, editors, journalists, and scholars.

 

Sensual Politics: Modern Romance Novel Reading and Reimagination of the Victorian Past, Hannah E. Scupham

Grant funds will be used to fund dissertation research. Scupham’s work focuses on how contemporary popular romance novels set in the nineteenth-century century seek to challenge and change modern readers’ imaginations of the nineteenth-century, specifically on issues of gender, sexuality, and race.

Here are some recent publications, one of which, by Caroline Duvezin-Caubet, touches on the same area of research as Scupham's, and it's free to read online.

Duvezin-Caubet, Caroline, 2020. "Gaily Ever After: Neo-Victorian M/M Genre Romance for the Twenty-First Century." Neo-Victorian Studies 13.1: 242-269.

Intan, Tania, 2020. "Formula Romance Dalam Perfect Romance Karya Indah Hanaco: Kajian Sastra Feminis." Alayasastra 16.2: 301-316. [More details here.]

Murias, Rosana, 2021. "In Grey and Pink: The Image of the Bride through the Spanish Postwar Novela Rosa." The Bride in the Cultural Imagination: Screen, Stage, and Literary Productions. Ed. Jo Parnell. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. 17-34. [More details here.]

Black Romance Podcast

 Julie Moody-Freeman, of DePaul University, has started a podcast:

The Black Romance Podcast features conversations with Black writers, editors, and scholars of historical and contemporary popular romance fiction. Guests talk about a range of experiences: their difficulties trying to publish love stories with Black characters; their favorite books; writing and teaching about black romance fiction; traditional vs self-publishing; publishing queer romance fiction; the impetus for writing books that focus on inclusion and racial uplift themes; and their recently released books. These intergenerational voices of writers featured in this podcast are beginning to build a much needed archive on the production and publication of Black Romance.

You can find out more at @blk_romance, Apple Podcasts, Spotify.

On Libraries, Medical Romance, Sex and Consent, RWA

The RWA has announced that the RITAs will be replaced by a new contest, called The Vivian, after Vivian Stephens, one of the founders of the RWA. [Archived version here.] There was some coverage of this in The Guardian. Here's a bit more detail about Vivian Stephens and why she's such an important figure in the history of romance:

A Black editor in a predominantly white industry, Stephens sought to incorporate the voices of women of color into the burgeoning romance industry. In 1980, Dell published the first category romance by a Black author with Black protagonists- Entwined Destinies by Rosalind Welles (the pseudonym of journalist Elsie Washington). Stephens also made sure that Dell’s Candlelight lines included romances by Indigenous, Latina, and Asian authors, creating almost single-handedly the category that trade publications called “Ethnic Romance”. (BGSU University Library)

There's more about her here. Some negative responses to the proposal to rename the RWA's main awards after her can be found here, including a comment from one author who stated that

I dislike people who try to rewrite history. I live in the South-Southwest where every county seat has a memorial to the Confederate soldiers. Taking them down does not change the Civil War. We all know that was a terrible event. I hate when people try to make history politically correct. It wasn't. We can't alter it.

Possibly a comment which says rather more about the RITAs than the author intended. Also, as an academic blog, I have to point out that historians are constantly "rewriting history." For example, here's an article about the history of the rewriting of the history of the US West. Often history needs to be rewritten because the version that's currently known is inaccurate:

Black cowboys and cowgirls have shown up to support Black Lives Matter this week, but their presence also symbolizes something much more. Black cowboys have long been part of American history: Historians estimate that during the 19th century, one in four cowboys was black. Many ranchers depended on these skilled black workers to herd their cattle, and many went on to become famous rodeo stars themselves, such as Bill Pickett, who invented the bulldogging technique. Yet throughout the 20th and 21st century, the narrative shifted. Hollywood films whitewashed the idea of the cowboy, turning it into a stoic caricature. (Vogue)

I only have one new publication to report in this post. However, it's freely available online:

Veros, Vassiliki, 2020. “The selective tradition, the role of romance fiction donations, and public library practices in New South Wales, Australia.” Information Research 25.2

On a more positive note with regards to libraries, the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, which has a collection of nurse romances, now also has an online exhibition of some of these texts, Angels and Handmaidens, which is designed in part to demonstrate how romance fiction can be a useful resources for scholars working in a wide range of fields:

This exhibition is a demonstration of how to begin primary source research; it suggests numerous ways that students and scholars might approach popular romance as a resource, and gives examples of the types of questions that can be asked of resources from popular culture while inviting the viewer to generate their own questions about the sources.

The exhibition was created by Katie Stollenwerk, who recently completed a 3 year internship with the UWM Special Collections department.

On the topic of consent, K. J. Charles has written a discussion of/guide to how to write consent in sex scenes which explains how depictions of consent have changed in romance and how to write it so that it's sexy because

these days there’s a lot of people who’d agree that consent is a Good Thing, but they don’t want to hear about it. Consent in romance sex scenes is frequently covered with a single “do you want this?” or variations thereon. (Or even “If you want me to stop, tell me now because I won’t be able to control myself much longer.” That was in a book published two years ago. Wow.)
The argument goes, roughly, that we know we have to tick the consent box, but:

• it’s unsexy to ask permission
• a properly sexy alpha hero can intuit that the virgin hero/ine really wants flagellation followed by anal on their first time
• consent is wishy-washy PC nonsense that gets in the way of the good stuff
• consent is boring because it’s just endless repetition of ‘may I kiss you’/do you like this?’  and people don’t really do that.

As it happens, some recent research by Jennifer L. Piemonte, Staci Gusakova, Marissa Nichols & Terri D. Conley, provides evidence in support of Charles' thesis that consent can be sexy. Here's an excerpt from the abstract of "Is consent sexy? Comparing evaluations of written erotica based on verbal sexual consent":

In Study 1, we compared brief excerpts of erotic fiction in which verbal sexual consent was either present or absent and determined that U.S. adults judged the stories similarly and, if anything, considered the excerpts with verbal consent sexier. In Study 2, we generated erotic stories that followed familiar, heterosexual scripts and compared evaluations of erotica with consent expressed explicitly and verbally to erotica with consent expressed implicitly through no resistance. Participants considered both versions equally as sexy, indicating that public concerns about consent ruining sexual dynamics are potentially unwarranted.

Papers that would have been given: BGSU conference

The Bowling Green State University romance conference would have started yesterday. Here's Wednesday's schedule: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/researchingromance/2020/4-22/

To help spread awareness of what colleagues are researching, at a time when people can only do this online, I'll post the titles of papers, including a link to the abstracts.

Carry Me Over the Threshold: Using Popular Romance Novels in Women’s and Gender Studies Classes to Teach Disciplinary Threshold Concepts 
Jessica Van Slooten, University of Wisconsin Green Bay

Finding a Family: The Genre World of #RomanceClass

Jodi McAlister, Deakin University, Australia
Claire Parnell, University of Melbourne
Andrea Anne Trinidad, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines

The Need for Romance Reader Studies

Mary Lynne Nielsen
Keira Soleore

Black Romance as Liberation: Beverly Jenkins' Historical Romance as Black Feminist Praxis and Historical Pedagogy

Nicole M. Jackson, Bowling Green State University

That '90s Kind of Love: Pinnacle Books and the birth of the African American romance novel

Jamee Nicole Pritchard, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

“To Be Able to Love Is Freedom”: African American Historical Romance as Neo-Slave Narrative

Qiana Whitted, University of South Carolina - Columbia

Fan Letters to Betty Cavanna: How Canonical Young Adult Literature Emerged from the Cold War Condemnation of Romance

Amanda Allen

From Pulp Tragedy to the Romance HEA: The evolution of gay pulp fiction and queer romance at Avon.

Sarah Slocum

Roar and Crash: Romance Novels of the Jazz Age and Depression Era

Jessica A. Kahan

Rare Books and Ripped Bodices: Teaching Romance as Book History

Rebecca Baumann, Indiana University - Bloomington

Romance and the Rare Book Trade

Rebecca Romney

Here's Thursday's schedule: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/researchingromance/2020/4-23/

Appetizing Fare: a comparison of two eras in the history of Gothic literature

Malia S. Jackson

Georgette Heyer's legacy in historical romance research

Alexandra Sterling

The Problem of "Clean" Romance: Blurring the Boundaries

Lee Tobin McClain, Seton Hill University

Browsing is Hard, And Taxonomies Are Dead Sexxy

Sarah Wendell
Stefanie Hunker, BGSU

Pushing Boundaries in Romance Fiction: How Erotic Romance Became Mainstream

Anna Michelson, Northwestern University

The Cultural Significance of Indie Black Romance

Nicole Falls

Writing the Romance: Resilience and Solidarity in the Digital Economy

Christine Larson, University of Colorado Boulder

Cracked Mirrors: Mental Health Representation in Romance

Melinda Utendorf

Let’s Talk About Sex: Examining Language Choices in Contemporary Romance

Darcey Lovell, University of Rhode Island

Plus Ones: Romantic Heroines as Mathematicians and Scientists

Heather M. Schell, George Washington University

Lesbian Romance Novels and the Representation of Female U.S. Presidency

Kathleen Kollman, Bowling Green State University

Reading Alyssa Cole's "Agnes Moor's Wild Knight"

Maura Kenny, CUNY Graduate Center

The Embodied Borders of Gender, Race, and Disability in His Road Home

Trinidad Linares

RITA Firsts: the RWA Comments

The RWA has issued a statement about the 2019 RITA winners:

We wanted to recognize the historic evening and RWA’s first two black author winners – M. Malone and Kennedy Ryan – and first South Asian author winner, Nisha Sharma. Their wins were far too long in coming. That delay only highlights the impressive nature of what they accomplished.

This was the first year in which the final round judging panel for each category included at least one judge from outside RWA. We also required that the final round judging panels be more diverse and reflective of our membership. It is our belief that these changes resulted in a fairer and more inclusive contest final, allowing members who might have been shut out of winning in the past to shine.

There will be more changes coming to the RITA Award in the 2019-2020 award season. 

Kennedy Ryan and M. Malone: First African-American RITA Winners

At last the RWA have an African-American winner of a RITA and, Fresh Fiction reports, the news was received with a standing ovation.

As Dee Carney pointed out, it's been a long wait.

Here's a picture of Kennedy Ryan accepting the award (for Best Contemporary Romance: Long), courtesy of Farrah Rochon:

Not much later, I'm happy to be updating this post because it was announced that M. Malone had also won a RITA (for Best Romance Novella):

And reactions from the winners themselves:

That's Kennedy Ryan writing:

Wow. What is this life, man??? I’m still reeling from this night. I was so humbled and honored to be a part of history. No black woman has won in the 37-year history of the RITA Awards. Please do not believe I am the first one to deserve it. There are so many whose stories were unsung and overlooked. I’m hoping today ushers in a new season of inclusion. Thank you to my tribe of women who lift me when I’m down and encourage me daily. Somebody pinch me!!!

And from Minx Malone:

I couldn’t say all this in my speech but I really want to put a message out there for all the secret dreamers.
Some people are comfortable dreaming out loud and proudly demanding the universe give them their due. That wasn’t me.
Some people thrive in the limelight and feel completely certain they’ll be a star one day. That wasn’t me either.
But I truly believe that speaking your dreams into existence works. In 2006 I attended RWA’s 25th anniversary conference in Atlanta. I was 25 years old. They gave out these cute little chocolate RITAs and I held it up and said “I’m going to have one of these one day.” At the time I didn’t know that no black woman had ever won. I didn’t know all the setbacks, tears and frustrations that would come. I just took a moment to dream out loud, despite how silly I felt holding that little chocolate up to the camera.
Now it is 2019 and I’m attending RWA’s 38th conference. I am 38 years old. And I got to stand on stage last night and make history with the amazing @kennedyryan1 as the first black women to ever win.
So go out there and dream loud and proud. Even if it makes you feel silly. Apparently the universe listens sometimes.

Bowling Green State University's romance conference starts today.

More details about the conference, which is being held on April 13-14, can be found here and you can follow events as they happen on Twitter, via #bgsuromcon18 and some can also be found on #BGSURomCom18 .

The guest of honor for the conference will be 2017 RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Beverly Jenkins, who has published more than 30 novels and is well-known for the level of detailed research she puts into each of her books – making her the perfect guest for this conference. She will be speaking and signing books Saturday afternoon at the Wood County District Public Library.

On the Friday there are presentations on a range of academic topics, including pedagogy, librarianship, masculinity, horror, feminism, research, race/ethnicity/nationality and history:

Romancelandia on Twitter: Designing a Digital Humanities Research Assignment for First-Year Writing Students

Heather M. Schell, George Washington University
Ann K. G. Brown, George Washington University

In Heather’s first-year writing class, Love and American Culture, in the primary goal is to introduce students to academic writing and research. Part of this entails helping students experience the excitement of writing a research paper when the topic is new and the questions are motivated by genuine interest. Heather has been collaborating with Ann, a research librarian, to develop an assignment sequence around original research on romance authors’ public social networks. The project uses Social Feed Manager and textual analysis tools to give students the opportunity to shape their own research questions and study the Twitter feed of the romance author of their choice.

The Category Romance Project: First-year Students Researching Romance
Jen Wofford, Ithaca College

“Vintage” category romances – commercial romance novels published twenty years old and older – can provide a fascinating data set for “community inquiry” (CoI), and a novel way to introduce students of writing to textual analysis. In its third iteration, my Ithaca College course Reading Popular Romance, is a writing-intensive first-year seminar taught using a Community of Inquiry (CoI) approach to instruction.

Where are all the Fun Books: Popular Romance and Science Fiction Novels in Academic Libraries
Sarah Sheehan, Manhattan College

Academic libraries have an uneven record of collecting popular contemporary literature (genre fiction). Due to this unevenness, colleges and universities that offer courses about particular genres or collect works devoted to the study of genre fiction may not actually own the primary texts. This study examines the extent to which award-winning novels in two popular genres—romance and science fiction—are included in the libraries of 114 major research universities (the Association of Research Libraries) and 80 prominent liberal arts colleges (the Oberlin Group).

Fantasies of Black Manhood: Black Masculinities in Brenda Jackson’s Westmoreland Series

Kelly L. Choyke, Ohio University - Main Campus
Kay-Anne P. Darlington PhD, University of Rio Grande

Popular romance is truly one of the few communities and forms of media where the male point of view is not catered to. While the romance genre is the most profitable and least respected literary genre, romance novels have nevertheless become a safe space to explore marginalized identities. Our study focuses on the representation of black masculinities in Brenda Jackson’s Westmoreland Series, published as category romances via Harlequin.

Happily Ever After …. And After: time travel, history and romance in the novels of Susanna Kearsley
Sarah H. Ficke, Marymount University

[...] place often plays a central role in romance fiction. A perfectly-decorated seaside cottage, like a gorgeous silk gown, can be materialistic wish fulfillment for a reader who has neither gown nor cottage. However, place can also be deeply emotional, creating and shaping the conditions for relationships. In this presentation, I will be exploring the intersection between romance, place, and history in three novels by Susanna Kearsley: The Winter Sea, The Rose Garden, and Mariana.

[...] Although they range across time, each of these novels is anchored by its setting, which plays a crucial role in the emotional development of the characters and their relationships. [...] I will argue that these novels provide a framework that can help us understand the simultaneous specificity of romance – a series of intimate moments between people – and our urge to view it as a timeless emotion.

True Love and Real Terror: Romance and Horror in Megan Hart’s The Darkest Embrace and Reawakened Passions
David Aldrich, Bowling Green State University

The Darkest Embrace and Reawakened Passions are romances that take place alongside a horror plot. Using Pamela Regis’s outline of essential elements of the romance, I will chart how both novellas fit the formula of a romance novel in a relatively short amount of pages. I will also make comparisons between Hart’s work and other short works of contemporary horror fiction produced online. This paper will show that the romance genre can be combined with the horror genre in a way that satisfies the expectations and conventions of both romance and horror, all in a short fiction format for a online audience.

Finding the Fairy Tale in Popular Romance
Linda J. Lee, University of Pennsylvania

Some novels retell specific well-known fairy tales, like “Cinderella” and “Beauty and the Beast” [...], while others incorporate a variety of fairy tale motifs without retelling a specific tale type [...]. Fairy tale intertextual references appear in just about every romance novel sub-genre [...]. Despite the almost ubiquity of fairy tale intertexts in romance, there are few scholarly considerations of the relationship between these narrative forms. Part of the difficulty is the misalignment between fairy tale theories and methods and the form of the romance novel. Jennifer Crusie’s “This Is Not Your Mother’s Cinderella: The Romance Novel as Feminist Fairy Tale” demonstrates some of the difficulties encountered when applying fairy tale theory to romance novels. Disciplinary boundaries and lack of familiarity with discipline-specific research methodologies and tools is another research challenge. In this paper proposes using Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey Tolbert’s concept of “the folkloresque” as a way to interrogate the use of fairy tales within popular romance novels.

Laboring for Love: Authorial Emotional Labor as Feminist Project in the Romance Novel Outlander
Emma Elizabeth Niehaus, Bowling Green State University

I argue that the common reception of the romance novel is yet another example of women’s emotional labor being regarded as frivolously sentimental when in actuality it is impactful social excavation. My project uses an analysis of emotional work to argue for the romance genre as a feminist project. Though the romance novel has been widely disputed as a viable feminist project, an in depth examination of the emotional labor of characters and writer has been widely overlooked in this argument. As example, I examine the romance novel Outlander, and the emotional labor performed by author Diana Gabaldon for the story’s heroine, Claire Randall. 

Researching the Romance Writers' Research

Caryn Radick, Rutgers University - New Brunswick/Piscataway

In this presentation, an archivist discusses her outreach to romance writers to learn more about their research behaviors, particularly their interest in and use of archives for writing their works. The results of this outreach led to the presenter’s article “Romance Writers’ Use of Archives,” published in Archivaria in 2016. It also led the presenter to invite two romance authors, Piper Huguley and Jennifer McQuiston, to the Society of American Archivists 2016 annual meeting to participate in a panel discussion on the role of research in their work. The presenter will share data gathered as part of a survey of romance writers about their research and discuss how the conversation at the panel session provided insight on how archivists might better serve the romance community and why it would be beneficial to do so.

Use Heart in Your (Re)Search: The Invitations of Popular Romance
Eric Murphy Selinger, DePaul University

Romance writers do research—but what about romance readers? If they do, what does their “research” look like? In this talk, I will explore the kinds of learning that previous scholars have said (and, sometimes, worried) might be inspired by romance fiction, with an eye to how these relate to the teaching and learning at work in other popular genres. (Thomas Roberts’s argument that all popular fiction invites us to “Think With Tired Brains” about serious and interesting topics will be central to this discussion; his Aesthetics of Junk Fiction has been central to my romance pedagogy for the past four or five years.) I will then compare these critical accounts with the actual learning and research that my students and I engage in as we grapple with romance novels in English courses at DePaul: both multi-author / subgenre surveys and 10-week courses focused on individual texts. One of those narrowly-focused seminars, on Sherry Thomas’s My Beautiful Enemy, will be underway during the conference, and I will describe what we are doing in it and why. (A clue from the heroine’s quest for ancient treasure in that novel, “use heart in your search,” gives my talk its title.) Rather than ask what romance novels do or don’t teach readers in general, I want to detail about what a few individual novels invite us to go and learn, about how they extend those invitations, and about what we find when we take up their offers, whether in or out of school.

History's Been Hijacked: How To Combat White Supremacy Through Popular Literature
Elizabeth Kingston

At the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, white supremacists carried banners covered in medieval heraldry alongside their Confederate flags, laying claim to the Middle Ages as a white, Christian utopia. This whitewashing of history and construction of a “white race” began during the Age of Enlightenment, and continued through the 19^th century – which just happens to be the most popular setting for Historical Romance.
Often seen as providing harmless escapism, the persistent fabrication of an all-white, all-Christian universe has resulted in an ignorance so extreme that many readers of Historical Romance reject the historical validity of non-white characters, or question the possibility that any non-white character could have a “happily ever after” in a white-dominated world. While this attitude has a dismaying effect on the genre, the wider implications of creating a popular fantasy world based on white supremacist ideology – and presenting is as actual history – are chilling.
For better or worse, our understanding of history largely comes from portrayals in pop culture, from Game of Thrones to Downton Abbey. Writers in the wildly popular genre of Romance have an opportunity to shape the perceptions of readers to more closely match the historical reality, and to prevent racially motivated hate groups from co-opting centuries of European history for their own purposes.

Romance Novels for Feminists: What Does That Mean?
Elizabeth Brownlow, Bowling Green State University

How do online spaces allow feminist romance readers to define and negotiate feminism for themselves? How do these readers define which romance novels are feminist, and which are not? In this case study, I will look at the popular romance review blog, Romance Novels for Feminists (RNFF). In 2009, Jackie C. Horne, a romance novelist, former children’s book editor, and literary scholar, established RNFF to review and comment on romance novels in all subgenres. RNFF does not explicitly state criteria for book selection, only stating that it “strives to review only books that in its opinion espouse and/or encourage feminist value.” RNFF’s reviews of feminist romance novels are based on a no-grading system intended to open up conversations about feminism and fiction. The reviews on RNFF allow for dialogue amongst readers, responding to both the books themselves and to Horne’s reading of them. This paper will explore the traits that Horne homes in on for her selection of “feminist romance” criteria as well as the traits that blog responders find most important. I will focus particularly on claims of sexist and feminist contradictions in these reviews. Moments of agreement and disagreement between reviewer and responders suggest romance readers are using online spaces such as RNFF to determine what feminism means to them as well as to form and articulate opinions on what does and does not count as feminist in the genre.

Romance Vs. Realism: How Critical Battles over Postwar Teen Romance Novels Led to the Emergence of Canonical Young Adult Literature
Amanda Allen, Eastern Michigan University 

In 1942, Maureen Daly published Seventeenth Summer, the wellspring text for a new genre of American romance novels aimed at a freshly-minted teenage reading audience. Called the “junior novels,” this genre was comprised of romance novels—often series texts— that focused on a girl’s first love experience. Although they quickly became the main stock of emerging teen library sections, the scholarship surrounding them became a site of contention, polarized into two opposing—and gendered—camps: (female) librarians, and (male) academics housed in English and English Education departments.
This paper uses the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of cultural production to examine not the junior novels themselves, but their reception by critics—a reception based on early Cold War values regarding what constituted “good” literature for girl readers (and, as a corollary, what constituted “good girls”). Thus, although librarian critics valued these romance novels for their use in girls’ socialization, most post-secondary academic critics opposed them, placing value on their view of literary quality. This use versus quality dichotomy, moreover, masked an underlying—and gendered—struggle over defining “realism” as specifically antithetical to “romance.”
An examination of the junior novel critics’ scholarship thus demonstrates a hidden, historical battle regarding who had the right—and ability—to define what constituted “value” in literature for girls, and illustrates how American postwar teen romance novels led to the creation and sanctioning of canonical young adult literature.

Stigmatizing the Romance Genre: Reading Romance in the Digital Age
Angela Hart, American University, Washington D.C.

The romance genre emerged as a counterpublic; a way for women to write books about women for women. Originally, the romance genre was not viewed as gender specific; but after World War II, and the return of men from the battlefields, women went back to their traditional roles, i.e. at home with their families. Romance novels have become a way to place female protagonists at the center of a story. Heroines across the genre are justified in their wants and desires, placing emphasis on the female experience and viewpoint. Today, romance readers face stigmatization due to their literary interests. Rather than celebrate a genre by women for women, readers and writers face marginalization. Avid readers of the romance genre find their voices in the online sphere; for instance, posting reviews or blog articles anonymously. On one hand, the online sphere should be commended for its ability to foster freedom of expression. Yet, on the other hand, it should be noted that the stigma surrounding the romance genre creates the need for ongoing anonymity. While readers are able to vocalize their thoughts, they may only feel comfortable doing so in an anonymous setting, unintentionally fostering the ongoing stigma of romance. The growth, accessibility, and affordability of e-books has also created a method for combating the genre’s stigma. Readers can make their literary purchases in the privacy of their own homes and privately read books on their electronic devices without preying eyes on recognizable romance book covers. The digital landscape is redefining romance and how readers discus the genre.

An Articulation of Modern Indian Values in the Romance of Sandhya Sridhar
Kristen Rudisill, Bowling Green State University

In 2009, avid romance reader Sandhya Sridhar quit her job at a newspaper in Chennai, India, and started her own company, Pageturn Publisher, which included the Red Romance Series, to publish English-language novels that she billed as “full blooded desi romance.” She sensed a need for romance novels more relatable to Indian readers than the imported Mills and Boons she grew up with. I argue elsewhere that desi romance can be considered a subgenre of romance, with the novels marked as Indian in a variety of ways that include language, content, and cultural values. Sridhar has written three books in the series, two in its first year (2010) and one in 2012. In this paper, I argue that Sridhar’s books have functioned as yardsticks for other authors and model the goals of this new subgenre. Through close readings of Heartbeats, Endless Time, and 31 Somnath Street, I address questions about family involvement in romance, acceptable erotic language, issues of consent, and an articulation of modern Indian values regarding sex and marriage. These values include respect for elders’ input, the inherent desirability of marriage and children, the prioritizing of the family over the individual, the importance of consent when it comes to intimate relationships, respect for all women, and women’s control over their own bodies and sexuality. These values reflect to readers Red’s ideas about of identity, self-realization, and romance in a post-colonial world.

Bringing Sexy Back: Asian/Asian-American Men as Romantic Leads
Trinidad Linares, Bowling Green State University

Although the image of an Asian/Asian-American woman has been a hypersexualized one, the Asian/Asian-American man has been a desexualized figure in American history. In contrast to Black or Latinx men, Asian/Asian American men have been represented as asexual or gay. They are the Other who does not pose a sexual threat to the white man because they lack sexual power or prowess. These stereotypes have created an imbalance in what minimal representations exist for Asian/Asian Americans in American culture, including romance novels. As a result, there are often more representations of Asian/Asian American women in interracial relationships with white men than there are of strictly Asian/Asian American couples. My presentation focuses on the history behind the sexless Asian/Asian American man stereotype and how trends in American popular culture towards Asian/Asian American men may be changing perspectives of them, which may be impacting the romance industry and could also be impacted by the romance industry. I will provide examples of how author ethnicities and audience reaction to Asian/Asian American men may be catapulting Asian/Asian American men to lead roles in romance novels for the American market. These Asian/Asian American leading men present a new option for masculinity, where sexual attractiveness and ability are not reliant on the abuse of the power dynamic between men and women because there are comparable oppressions (interracial coupling between a white woman and an Asian/Asian American man) or whiteness is decentralized (Asian/Asian American couple or an Asian/Asian American man with a woman of color).

Outlandish romance: Fan and author navigation of romance genre boundaries

Spring Duvall, Salem College

When the first novel in the international bestselling Outlander series debuted in 1991, it was marketed as a quintessential historical romance - complete with a highly stylized cover - and shelved in the romance genre sections of bookstores and libraries. Cementing its status as a romance novel, Outlander won the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for Best Romance of 1991. Yet, even though author Diana Gabaldon courted romance fans and accepted the community’s awards, she also insisted that her novels were not just romance novels and struggled for years to have her books moved into general fiction sections and to be recognized as more than just a romance writer.
This in-depth critical analysis of Gabaldon’s body of work examines her uneasy position within the romance genre and the tensions among her critics and fans who seek to define her as a romance writer or establish her as a general fiction writer. This presentation will discuss a textual analysis of the Outlander books and the television adaptation of the series, as well as a critical analysis of online fan communities and media critics who review the books and television series. In this research, I position myself as both a feminist media scholar who studies and teaches scholarship on romance novels and as a long-term fan of Gabaldon’s work who is deeply familiar with the Outlander fan community.

Paranormal Romance: A History
Maria T. Ramos-Garcia, South Dakota State University

Paranormal Romance was a term coined in the 1990’s, but during that decade, this subgenre was very marginal. The genre, which was all but disappearing by the year 2000 started to take off at the beginning of the 21^st Century. September 11^th triggered a new interest in romances with paranormal elements that allowed both writers and readers to delve on issues too painful or controversial to confront directly at the time. In the early years after the attack there was a preponderance of novels portraying the shock of discovering magical (and menacing) elements irrupting in our everyday reality. Later on series tended to develop fictional worlds in which the paranormal elements were a given, abandoning the discovery narratives. They either reflect a dystopian reality, or the realistic world becomes a backdrop for the action, but not an essential element of it. Over time, the superficially apolitical nature of the paranormal romance has been eroded with more openly ideological discourses emerging often. This evolution parallels the trajectory of other non-romance genres, especially urban fantasy. This paper will offer an overview of the history of the genre, emphasizing the connections between romance, culture, and history. While romance as a reflection of the changing gender roles of women over time has been frequently observed by critics, there is a scarcity of a more systematic evaluation of romance as a dynamic genre intimately connected with its historical moment. This paper will challenge this perspective offering a new reading of this subgenre.

Christian Romance Novels through the Eyes of West African Women
Philomena Archibong Offiong, Bowling Green State University

The romance novel has been a source of ridicule and criticism ever since its inception and most especially due to its consumption by women. Scholars such as Tania Modleski and Janice Radway arguing that it actually empowers women of which African women are included. However, there exists little or no scholarship on African Romance novels or even Romance novels based on Africa. My paper, therefore, seeks to address the scarcity of African romance novels which special attention to West African women. It is interesting to find out that mostly Christian authors have been able to combine these two powerful themes into a novel that entertain while evangelizing to people. The West African woman like every other in the Western world enjoy romance novels, however, there exist very literature on African Romance novels. My paper seeks to determine if the few African romance novels are written and published by African press follow the romance formula and most importantly, do these books be used by feminists to empower more women or are these novels in tune with the African cultures and religious beliefs that endorses patriarchal rule. My paper will use the use the novel of Unoma Nwankwor’s “An Unexpected Blessing” and Lynn Neal’s “Romancing God” since the novel falls under Christian romance and African women are noted to be religious; thus shedding more light on the relevance of this little-recognized issue.

Fantasies of Masculinity in Male/Male Popular Romance
Jonathan Allan, Brandon University

In her book, Hard-Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Best-Sellers, and Society, Eva Illouz asks: “why is traditional masculinity pleasurable in fantasy?” (58) To answer this question, I focus on the rise of the male/male popular romance novel, and think through why these novels are pleasurable. To these ends, I draw on Lucy Neville’s work on gay pornography, which she argues “subverts the patriarchal order by challenging masculinist values, providing a protected space for non-conformist, non-reproductive, non-familiar sexuality, and encourages many sex-positive values” (204). While this may be true of gay pornography, can we say the same is true of the male/male popular romance? Does the male/male popular romance novel really subvert the “patriarchal order”? Does it provide a space that “encourages many sex-positive values”? As such, this paper attends to a close reading of texts alongside theoretical work coming out of queer theory and the critical study of men and masculinities. Ultimately, I argue that the male/male popular romance novel remains an important site of analysis for studies of masculinity, but that, at bottom, we are still left with “traditional masculinity” as noted by Illouz, and, in many ways, the “profoundly bourgeois" (207) values central to the romance narrative that Pamela Regis noted in A Natural History of the Romance Novel. As such, I argue that these novels are not as subversive as we might hope for.

Queer Evolution: A Biocultural Investigation of Gay Romance Fiction
Nicholas B. Clark, Bowling Green State University

Literary Darwinism and biocultural theories of literature have seemingly ignored queer identities in their studies of literature, film, and popular culture. This study attempts to begin the integration of biocultural theories and queer theories by analyzing a collection of stories from Japanese BL (boys love), bara manga, and Western romance novels. These three unique genres are selected to give attention to narratives written by both straight and gay writers. The implications of generic format and the identities of the writers will be discussed as well. By comparing and contrasting these genres, this study seeks to establish the biocultural implications homosexual identities function within these texts. Specific attention will be paid to homosexual courtship and evolutionary theories of homosexuality, and how these texts conform to or deny specific theories. In addition to the traditional biocultural theories, attention will be given to the specific Japanese understandings of homosexuality and same-sex relationships and the country’s history of homosexuality and homosexual identities. In doing so, this study hopes to begin understanding queer identities within a Literary Darwinist framework, for just as fiction has be used to explore philosophy, so to can fiction be used to explore evolutionary psychology.

Revenge of the Romance: How romance novels transform the nerd stereotype
Robin Hershkowitz, Bowling Green State University

The character of the ‘nerd’ has been prevalent in popular culture, usually represented as a man whose intelligence and lack of social skills keep him from achieving his ultimate desire: obtaining an attractive girlfriend. Since the early 21^st century, the concept of the nerd has expanded to discussions of toxic masculinity and entitlement, often seen in such arenas as the culture of the tech industry and the Gamer Gate phenomenon. My paper addresses the central question of how the modern romance genre includes these character archetypes and incorporates them into the romance genre. Specifically, in my paper, I will use the scholarship of Carol Thurston, Jennifer Crusie-Smith, Lynn Coddington, and representations of masculinity to analyze the nerd character in the contemporary romance novels Romancing the Nerd by Leah Rae Miller (2016) and Nerd in Shining Armor by Vicki Lewis Thompson (2003). I will use these case studies to illustrate how a feminist reading of romance novels interprets and redefines the highly gendered concept of the nerd, how the genre provides a space for character transformation, how these texts redefine the concept of the ‘nerd’ in terms of the self, and to examine how the nerd character is a product of gender performance.

The conference continues on Saturday!

RWA, RITAs and Race

Laura Vivanco

On 30 March the RWA posted the following (as part of a slightly longer statement):

We’ve only recently started collecting demographic information on our members, and that is on a voluntary basis. But from what we could determine, the statistics for black author RITA finalists from 2000 to 2017 are:

• The number of finalist books by black authors is less than half of 1% of the total number of finalist books

• No black romance author has ever won a RITA

We understand there are questions about which authors enter and what percentage of entrants are black authors. We will attempt to gather that information in the future to answer these questions but, in the meantime, it is impossible to deny that this is a serious issue and that it needs to be addressed.

I don't know precisely what prompted this statement. It seems quite likely it had been in preparation for some time, but the demographics of this year's RITA finalists had caused concern after "RWA announced the finalists for the 2018 RITA and Golden Heart awards on March 21" (RWA). Courtney Milan, who is a Director-at-Large on the current RWA Board of Directors, has noted that

If we lived in a society with real representation, of the 88 works that were RITA finalists this year, we would expect that 12 of them were black, 5 were Asian, 1 was Native, and 16 were Hispanic (with some percentage of those being nonwhite Hispanics.) [...] By my count, this year 4 of our finalists are Hispanic and 2 are Asian (Four Hispanic because I’m going by finaling works, not authors, and Alexis Daria and Priscilla Oliveras has works that double finaled as best first book.)

One of the ironies of this is that RWA came into existence because of an African-American editor, Vivian Stephens:

In 1979, editor Vivian Stephens and a group of romance writers met at a writers conference at the University of Houston. At the time, writers groups largely ignore the romance genre, and these women recognized the value of an organization dedicated to the needs of romance writers in the rapidly growing American romance fiction market. (RWA)

And yet, the RWA has often felt like an extremely unwelcoming place to people of colour. For instance,

Did you know that women of color who attend RWA often have what is in effect a buddy system? So they’re not left alone? Did you know that every year, Black women who sit down at lunch tables see white women stand up and move to not sit with them? That black women with twenty books to their name get called “aspiring authors”? That these things happen under the nose of white authors who don’t say anything because it would be “mean”? (Courtney Milan)

That black author with twenty books to her name was Kianna Alexander:

And the person who said it to me was an editor at a major publishing house, who simply looked at me and assumed I was "aspiring" rather than multi-published.

Publishers are clearly part of the problem. The lack of diversity in romance publishing was highlighted in The Ripped Bodice's 2016 report on the issue. In 2017 they repeated their analysis of romance publishing and their

study highlights just how glaring of an issue racial discrimination continues to be. This is an urgent issue. The downward trend in the industry as a whole this year shows that simply noting and discussing the problem is not enough. We need action. [...]
Do not mistake this data as evidence that books written by authors of color do not exist. The books ARE out there. They are being self-published due to publishers' historic and current attitudes towards non white authors.

As Courtney Milan indicates, the net effect of all discriminatory attitudes and barriers to inclusion is to create

a tale of two RWAs. [...] It’s not just about people. It’s about the entire system of power. [...] In 2016, more black women were RITA finalists than in any of those other years before. One of those black women was @PhyllisBourne, who finaled with a book that was released by Harlequin Kimani. Harlequin tends to celebrate its RITA-finaling authors—they’re very proud of the fact that their series authors write wonderful books that capture hearts, and they should be. Those authors are often given pride of place at their publisher signings. Phyllis Bourne, who was attending RWA, was not invited to sign her RITA finalist book at their signing. She wasn’t invited to sign at all. She reminded them she had a RITA finalist (was, IIRC, the only black Harlequin finalist?), and they just snubbed her. [...]

Like I said, this is a tale of two RWAs—one in which every woman of color was aware that a large number of black authors faced an existential threat to their career, and one where most white woman had no idea. [...] WOC wanted Phyllis to win. We really did. And yeah, we understood it might not happen, but man, publishing is full of disappointments. You get up and you keep going. But there was ONE book in that category that...um, let’s say, I didn’t hear a lot of WOC they wanted it to win. This was a book (written by a white author) where the heroine was Native. She had a family history of alcoholism and poverty (because of course she did) and the hero was a white savior, and... it’s really not about that book. [...] It was hurtful that we knew some of our fellow authors who served as judges had read these books and didn’t notice that they were deeply racially problematic at best. But it’s not like racially problematic books hadn’t finaled before. You just hope they don’t win. It’s one thing if five judges randomly chosen don’t notice it. But five final round judges, hand-picked, would have to like it for it to win. You know which book won. And—by the way, this is important—Harlequin also published this book.

This, and more details and examples, can be found here, on Courtney Milan's thread. Seressia Glass adds more detail about the hurtful comments directed at her at that conference and each one matters because, as she states, "microaggressions add up." A pattern of microaggressions makes clear who is an "outsider" and whose work is not likely to be valued; the targets of microaggressions react accordingly. Beverly Jenkins, who is celebrated for her historical romances about African-Americans, for example,

never received a RITA until the LTA [Lifetime Achievement Award] last year because I never entered. Back in the 90s, I knew my chances of being a finalist were zero to nil, so why put myself through that. When I gave keynote in 2016 there was a record number of POC and queer finalists. Was this due to the judges? The numbers submitted? I was hoping it was a trend, then last year? Nope. Back to “normal”. This year “normal” too.

Sasha Devlin notes that:

Romance is always talking about how empowering the genre is for women, how welcoming, rah rah sisterhood & yet the truth is for many of us it's a gauntlet. Every event, con, meeting is a chance for Who Might Be Racist? Who Will Back Me Up?

To summarise, this is an issue which affects many different areas of publishing. It affects: how people are treated in person; which authors receive contracts from publishers and which do not; it is about the contents of the books which are and aren't published; it is about readers and the books they do (or don't) find problematic. On that last point, here's an example of a Harlequin romance, published in March 2017, which as pointed out here by azteclady has "so many things wrong with it" yet it nonetheless received a favourable, B review at All About Romance, whose reviewer would "recommend this book to adventurous readers looking to try something new." And here's a 2007 RITA-winner published by Jove which I critiqued at the time for its racist stereotypes: the reviewer at the Historical Novel Society noticed the "helpful peasants, and villains who only lack a mustache to twirl to complete their stereotypical portrait" but nonetheless concluded that "this is still a fast, fun read."

There's a lot to fix:

I mean fix the presumptions of quality. Fix the presumptions of "I can't relate to 'those' characters." Fix the perspective that you can't help.  (Adrienne Michel - another current RWA Director-at-Large)

We can all play our part in bringing about change. I wish RWA well as it attempts to address this deep-seated, systemic issue.