IASPR Conference and New Publications: Climate Change, Migration, Readers, History, Libraries

The IASPR conference starts tomorrow and the schedule (with abstracts of the papers to be presented) is available for download here: https://www.iaspr.org/conferences/schedule-romance-revitalised/ . The topics for the various panels include: Booktok, Black Romance, Historical Romance, Love Studies, Paranormal Romance, Queer Romance and much more!

The conference will also see the launch of Jayashree Kamblé's new book, Creating Identity The Popular Romance Heroine's Journey to Selfhood and Self-Presentation (which you can read more about here).

In addition, this week only, the ebook version of Publishing Romance Fiction in the Philippines by Jodi McAlister, Claire Parnell  and Andrea Anne Trinidad, which was published earlier this year by Cambridge University Press, is available for free download here.

Here's a list of some other recent publications:

Ali, Kecia (2023). "The End of the World as We Know It: Climate Catastrophe in Nalini Singh's Paranormal Romance Fiction." The Journal of the Core Curriculum: An Annual Literary and Academic Anthology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University 32:81-86. [At the time of adding this to the list, the 2023 volume of this journal wasn't yet available online.]

Burge, Amy (2023). "Romantic Love across Borders: Marriage Migration in Popular Romance Fiction." Contemporary Love Studies in the Arts and Humanities: What's Love Got To Do With It? Ed. Madalena Grobbelaar, Elizabeth Reid Boyd and Debra Dudek. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. 39-49. [Abstract]

Parks, Amy Noelle (2023). "The Feminist Possibilities of Heteroglossic Spaces in Contemporary Young Adult Romance Novels." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 12.

Phipps, Catherine (2023). "‘The Machine for Showing Desire’: Desert Romance Fiction and Knowing Sexual Desire." Historical Research, Creative Writing, and the Past: Methods of Knowing. Ed. Kevin A. Morrison and Pälvi Rantala. New York: Routledge. [Abstract and Excerpt]

Richey, Weston (2023). "(Loves) Me, (Loves) Me Not: Unbuilding of Selfhood in the Romance of the Present." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 12.

Veros, Vassiliki (2023). "Nobody Puts Romance Fiction in the Corner: Public Librarians in New South Wales and Their Dalliance with Romance Fiction." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 12.

Free Book (for a Limited Time Only): Publishing Romance Fiction in the Philippines

Jodi McAlister, Claire Parnell and Andrea Anne Trinidad's Publishing Romance Fiction in the Philippines has just been published by Cambridge University Press and "is free online from 19th May 2023 - 2nd June 2023." You can download it from https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009092289 by clicking on the "save pdf" button which appears directly below the summary.

Here's some more information about the book:

The romance publishing landscape in the Philippines is vast and complex, characterised by entangled industrial players, diverse kinds of texts, and siloed audiences. This Element maps the large, multilayered, and highly productive sector of the Filipino publishing industry. It explores the distinct genre histories of romance fiction in this territory and the social, political and technological contexts that have shaped its development. It also examines the close connections between romance publishing and other media sectors alongside unique reception practices. It takes as a central case study the Filipino romance self-publishing collective #RomanceClass, analysing how they navigate this complex local landscape as well as the broader international marketplace. The majority of scholarship on romance fiction exclusively focuses on the Anglo-American industry. By focusing here on the Philippines, the authors hope to disrupt this phenomenon, and to contribute to a more decentred, rhizomatic approach to understanding this genre world.

Details on how to attend the IASPR Conference online 10-17 July 2020!

I'm really pleased to be able to share details of the online 2020 IASPR Conference (10-17 July)


The sign-up page and details of presentations and round-table discussions are accessed from https://iaspr2020showcase.org/

Presenters include (but are not limited to!):

Kecia Ali
Loving in the Doom Years: Nora Roberts’ Chronicles of the One

Amanda Allen
How YA Literature Emerged from the Cold War Condemnation of Popular Romance

Javaria Farooqui
Reading Anglophone Historical Popular Romances in Pakistan

Maria Isabel González Cruz
Building a Glossary of Hispanicisms in a Corpus English Romances Set in the Canaries

Jayashree Kamblé
Recoloring London: Empire and Ethnicity in Popular Romance

María Ramos-García
Transatlantic Definitions of Whiteness in Louise Bergstrom’s Gothic Romances in the Canary Islands (1971-72)

Heather Schell
Love in a White Climate: Category Romance and the Anglosphere

Angela Toscano
Big Girls Don’t Cry or Get the Guy: Representations of Fatness in Romance

Andrea Anne I. Trinidad
“Kilig to the Bones!”: Kilig as the backbone of the Filipino Romance Experience