The open access journal TEXT dedicated a special issue to romance/romantic fiction, under the subtitle "Trope Actually – Popular Romance" but it wasn't just about romances in the 'central romantic relationship +HEA' sense: there were pieces of short fiction as well as an article on bonkbusters and another on historical fiction. You can find the whole issue here.
Here, though, is a list of the articles in it which focus on romance:
Matthews, Amy, Justina Ashman, Millie Heffernan, Payton Hogan, Abby Guy,
Harrison Stewart, Kathleen Stanley, Alex Cothren, and Elizabeth
Duffield. 2025. “Editorial: Degrees of Love and Trope Actually.” TEXT 29 (Special 75): 1–7.
García-Aguilar, Alberto (2023). "De la novela rosa a la comedia romántica: Mi
marido es usted (1938), de Mercedes Ballesteros, y el guion de Volver a
soñar (1942), de Claudio de la Torre y José López Rubio." Ogigia. Revista Electrónica De Estudios Hispánicos 33: 97–118. [I know this one isn't very new, but it describes (in Spanish) a plot with a secret baby, in a novel from 1938, and I thought that was worth noting. I've come across an early Mary Burchell with a secret baby too (another one where the protagonists were married at the point the baby was conceived). Anyway, thought that might be of interest if anyone, at some point, decides to look into the history of various types of romance plot.]
Keran, Molly (2025). "Generic Guarantees." Mid Theory Collective. [This was looking at Hoover's It Ends with Us (and contrasting it with Jennifer Crusie's Crazy for You).]
Larson, Christine (2025). The labor of love: romance authors and platform solidarity.Journal of Communication. [Abstract available here.]
Martín Coloma, Ricardo, 2025. “On Activist Mothers and Gentrifying Lovers: From the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement to the Model-Minority Myth in the Caribbean Romance Novel.” Journal of American Studies. [Abstract here, though as I mention in my entry for this in the RSDB, I think maybe only one of the two novels looked at has a happy ending for a romantic relationship.]
McAlister, Jodi and Kate Cuthbert (2025). "Romantasy: An overview and a history."Synergy
23.2. [Abstract]
Pradhan, Anil, 2025. "Return to Nature, Love: The Queer Potential of
Rural Spaces and Travels in Contemporary Indian Gay Romance Fiction." Non-Western Approaches in Environmental Humanities.
Ed. Gabriela Jarzębowska-Lipińska, Aleksandra Ross and Krzysztof
Skonieczny. Göttingen: V&R unipress. 183-199. [It is open access and
should be available as a pdf from https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/pdf/10.14220/9783737018791 (the first page is blank, so keep scrolling!) and/or https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737018791.183 I haven't given it a separate entry in the database because it seems to be based on a chapter of the author's PhD thesis, and also many of the works discussed do not have happy endings, so are "romantic fiction" and not "romance". There are synopses in the thesis but not in this chapter.]
van Peer, Willie and Anna Chesnokova (2025). "Love in Literature: Why Read About It?". International Handbook of Love: Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives (2nd edition). Ed. Claude-Hélène Mayer and Elisabeth Vanderheiden. Springer, Cham.
This is a long list: I should have posted an update earlier.
Capps, Stephanie Carol, 2017.
"What You Read and What You Believe: Genre Exposure and Beliefs
about Relationships". Master of Science thesis. University of Oklahoma,
Norman, Oklahoma, 2017. Pdf [This seems similar to the article below by Stern et al. I wonder if Capps changed surname between 2017 and 2018, as the first name and second initial are identical, as is the title of the paper.]
Jackson, Cia, 2017.
"Harlequin Romance: The Power of Parody and Subversion." The Ascendance of Harley Quinn: Essays on DC's Enigmatic Villain. Ed. Shelley E. Barba and Joy M. Perrin. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017. 16-??. Excerpt [This is about how the DC comics parody romance novel conventions via the figure of Harley Quinn.]
Johnson, Valerie B., 2018.
"What a Canon Wants: Robin Hood, Romance Novels, and Carrie Lofty’s What a Scoundrel Wants", Robin Hood and the Outlaw/ed Literary Canon, ed. Lesley Coote and Alexander L. Kaufman. ???: Routledge, 2018. 184-??? Excerpt
Lee, Zi-Ying and Min-Hsiu Liao, 2018.
'The “Second” Bride: The Retranslation of Romance Novels'. Babel. Published online first 27 August 2018. Abstract and full pre-publication version
McAlister, Jodi, 2018.
‘ “Feelings Like the Women in Books”: Declarations of Love in Australian Romance Novels, 1859–1891’, Emotions: History, Culture, Society 2.1: 91-112. Abstract
Neal, Lynn S., 2013.
‘Evangelical Love Stories: The Triumphs and
Temptations of Romantic Fiction,’ in Evangelical Christians and
Popular Culture: Pop Goes the Gospel, ed. Robert H. Woods, Jr,
vol. 2 (Santa Barbara: Praeger): 1–20. Excerpt.
Olivarez, Omar, Ryan Hardie, and Kate G. Blackburn, 2018.
“The Language of
Romance: An Open Vocabulary Analysis of the Highest Rated Words Used
in Romance Novels.” Journal of
Language and Social Psychology.
First Published August 18, 2018. Abstract
Pérez‐Gil, María del Mar, 2018.
"Exoticism, Ethnocentrism, and Englishness in Popular Romance Fiction: Constructing the European Other". Journal of Popular Culture. Published online first 19 July 2018. [Focuses on the Spanish "Other" in the English imagination.] Excerpt
Stern, Stephanie C., Brianne Robbins, Jessica E. Black and Jennifer L. Barnes, 2018.
"What You Read and What You Believe: Genre Exposure and Beliefs About Relationships." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. Abstract and a short summary I posted at my personal blog, focused on the findings about romance readers.
"The Translation/Mutation of Romantic Love: An Exploration of the
Translation History of Modern Romances in Taiwan after 1960". PhD
Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University. Abstract
Fletcher, Lisa, Beth Driscoll, and Kim Wilkins, 2018.
"Genre Worlds and Popular Fiction: The Case of Twenty-First-Century Australian Romance", Journal of Popular Culture. Online First 16 July 2018. Excerpt
Golubov, Nattie, 2017.
El amor en tiempos neoliberales: apuntes críticos sobre la novela rosa contemporánea. Ciudad de México: Bonilla Artigas, 2017. [Free from a variety of sites, including the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Amazon and Academia.edu.]
González Cruz, María-Isabel, 2018.
"Hispanismos en el discurso romántico de Harlequin y Mills & Boon. Ámbitos temáticos y funciones socio-pragmáticas". Moderna språk 112.1: 163-184. Abstract and link to pdf
Nelson, Elizabeth, 2015.
"The Romance of Self-Publishing". Self-Publishing and Collection
Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Libraries. Ed. Robert P.
Holley. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2015. 149-157.[Whole volume available as a pdf here]
O’Mahony, Lauren and Olivia Murphy, 2018.
'From polite society to the Pilbara: The ingénue abroad in Evelina and The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots', Outskirts 38:1-23. [Abstract and Pdf]
Pérez Casal, Inmaculada, 2018.
"The Romance Novel as Bildungsroman in the Works of Rosamunde Pilcher and Lisa Kleypas". Taking Stock to Look Ahead: Celebrating Forty Years of English Studies in Spain.
Ed. María Ferrández San Miguel and Claus-Peter Neumann. Zaragoza:
Prensas Universitarias de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2018. 139-144.[Whole volume available as a pdf here]
Spears, Jessica D., 2018.
The Romance Novel Cover. MA Thesis (Art History). City University of New York (CUNY), Hunter College, 2018. Abstract and link to pdf.
Washington, AlTonya, 2015.
"An Indie Author in a Library World". Self-Publishing and Collection Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Libraries. Ed. Robert P. Holley. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2015. 139-147.[Whole volume available as a pdf here]
The IASPR 2018 conference now has its programme online but prior to that appearing there was a lot of very thorough tweeting by a number of attendees, using #iaspr18. Since Kat (@BookThingo) has really comprehensive threads, I've used the threadreaderapp to bundle her tweets together and I'm linking to them below.
Session 1 - Romancing Australia, with papers by Amy T. Matthews and Amy Mead (Flinders University), Kate Cuthbert and Jodi McAlister (Deakin University) SEE THREAD
There's more about changes affecting cover art, as discussed by Kate Cuthbert, here, from Claire Parnell via the @PopFicDoctors: Coverart and here's a podcast interview with Jodi McAlister in which she discusses her paper: Podcast. In addition, Renée Dahlia has written a blog post about the session.
Session 2 - Gender and Sexuality, with papers by Ellen Carter (University of Strasbourg), Christina Vogels (AUT New Zealand) and Andrea Anne Trinidad (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) SEE THREAD
Renée Dahlia's written a blog post about this session.
Here's a podcast from New Zealand Radio with Christina Vogels about her PhD thesis, titled It's a masculinity sort of thing: Young men talk about the rules of (hetero)romantic relationships.
Session 3 - Places and Spaces of Love, with papers by Kecia Ali (Boston University), Jacqueline Jones (LaGuardia CC, City University of New York) and Vassiliki Veros (University of Technology, Sydney) SEE THREAD
A similar presentation by Vassiliki Veros on "Exploring library metadata and how it can marginalise romance fiction" is up on YouTube.
Session 4 - Keynote Panel on “Romancing Popular Fiction Studies: A Theory of Genre Worlds” by Beth Driscoll (University of Melbourne), Lisa Fletcher (University of Tasmania) and Kim Wilkins (University of Queensland) SEE THREAD and, from Jodi McAlister, with more graphics: See thread
There's also a podcast recorded with the presenters in advance of this panel: Podcast
Session 5 - History and Romance, with papers by Stephanie Russo (Macquarie University), Jennifer Wallace and Francesca Pierini (Academia Sinica, Taiwan).
Kat had to miss most of this session, so the thread is by Jodi McAlister: SEE THREAD
Philippa B's summary of Stephanie Russo's paper on "Georgette Heyer’s Unruly Eighteenth Century" can be found here.
Phillipa B's summary of Pierini's presentation about "Italian timelessness" can be found here.
Jennifer Wallace writes romance as Jennifer Hallock and she's put her paper up on her website in two parts. Part one looks at how the bestsellers in historical romance are
disproportionately: (1) set in Great Britain; (2) overpopulated with
nobles; and (3) selective in their historical accuracy. Part two looks at how the aggregate impact of these chronotopes can be
harmful to our understanding of history, to the romance market as a
whole, and particularly to authors of diverse books. For links to more graphics and a way to help Jennifer crowdsource historical romances which differ from the chronotope she identified, go here and scroll to the end of the post.
Phillipa B's summary of Jennifer Wallace's "History Ever After: Fabricated historical chronotopes in romance genre fictions" can be found here.
Session 6 - Power and Patriarchy, with papers by Heather Schell (George Washington University), Nattie Golubov (Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Therese Dryden (University of Newcastle) and Jayashree Kamblé (LaGuardia CC, City University of New York) SEE THREAD
Philippa B's post about Heather Schell's "The Soft Power of Popular Romance" can be found here.
Philippa B's post about Nattie Golubov's "Dangerous loves endangered: nationalism, violence and territoralization in US paramilitary romance fiction" is here.
Philippa B's summary of Therese Dryden/Michelle Douglas's "The Single Mother and the Law: Romance novels making room for female voices in patriarchal spaces" is here.
And details of Jayashree Kamblé's “One of the Guys? Eve Dallas as a Masculine Worker Heroine in J.D. Robb’s In Death series", also by Philippa B.
Session 7 - 19th Century Legacies, with papers by Sarah Ficke (Marymount University), Steven Gil and Lucy Sheerman SEE THREAD
See Renée Dahlia's blog post about the session.
Details here about Sarah Ficke's “House, Home, and Husband in Historical Romance Fiction", from Philippa B.
Steven Gil's "Beloved Monstrosity: Romance and Romanticism in Frankenstein" has been summarised by Philippa B.
Philippa B has summarised Lucy Sheerman's “Reader, I mirrored him: the recasting of romance tropes in Jane Eyre fanfiction" here.
Session 8 - Muslim and Middle Eastern Romance, with papers by Kathrina Daud (University of Brunei), Claire Parnell (University of Melbourne), Javaria Farooqui (University of Tasmania) and Amy Burge (University of Birmingham) SEE THREAD
See Renée Dahlia's blog post about the session.
Philippa B's posted about Kathrina Daud's "Muslims reading romance: Bruneian considerations of “Halal” and romance novels" here.
The abstract of Claire Parnell's “Reading and Writing Muslim Romance Online” and notes on the session by Philippa B can be found here.
Philippa B's post on Javaria Farooqui's “The Kitchen and Beyond: Romantic Chronotope of Pakistani Popular Fiction" is here.
Amy Burge's “Girls of Riyadh and Desperate in Dubai: Reading and writing romance in the Middle East" is summarised here by Philippa B.
Session 9 - Romancing Chinese Worlds, with papers by Fang-Mei Lin (National Taiwan Normal University), Huike Wen (Willamette University), Jin Feng (Grinnell College) and Erin S. Young (SUNY Empire State College) SEE THREAD (by Jodi McAlister)
See Renée Dahlia's blog post about the session.
The abstract of Huike Wen's “On the Way to a Better Life: Countryside themed romance in recent Chinese Television" and some additional comments from the paper are provided by Philippa B here.
Philippa B also provides these for Jin Feng's “Life Is Elsewhere: The Economy of Food and Sex in Chinese Web Romance”
and for “Romance in Chinatown: The Love Stories of Edith Maude Eaton” by Erin S. Young.
Session 10 - South/South-East Asian Romance Communities with a paper by Meghna Bohidar (University of Delhi)
Bohidar: young romantic couples are less concerned with caste and religious differences, however they still shape subjectivity e.g. through taste. #IASPR18pic.twitter.com/QrvvM5tZFt
For those who can't read the text in that photo, it contains a definition of an important term used in Bohidar's paper: "Habitus is a set of microbehaviors consisting of a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions that are unconsciously ingrained based on one's class position"
SEE THREAD and Philippa B's summary of Meghna Bohidar's “Negotiating Romantic Love in India: Family, Public Space, and Popular Cinema"
The session then moved on to Kat Mayo's interview of/conversation with Mina V. Esguerra
Session 11 - Subversions of Race, Culture and History with papers by Eric Murphy Selinger (DePaul University), Mallory Jagodzinski (Indiana University South Bend) and Johanna Hoorenman (Utrecht University) SEE THREAD and, from Jodi McAlister, A SUPPLEMENTARY THREAD
The abstract of, supplemented by notes by Philippa B on, Eric Murphy Selinger's “The Wild Heart of the Continent: Love and Place in Sherry Thomas’s Silk Road Romance Novels”
The same, but for Mallory Jagodzinski's “Love is (Color) Blind: Race, Belonging, and Nation in 21st Century Historical Romance Fiction" is here.
Again, an abstract followed by comments by Philippa B, this time on “‘You stayed’: Love, law and the reservation in Jenna Kernan’s Apache Protectors series" by Johanna Hoorenman.
Session 12 - Love in Other Worlds with papers by Donna Hanson (University of Canberra), María T. Ramos-García (South Dakota State University), Athena Bellas (University of Melbourne) and Kristin Noone (Irvine Valley College) SEE THREAD and coverage of the FINAL PAPERS in this thread by Jodi McAlister.
Philippa B's post about Donna Hanson's “Love in Outer Space: Science fiction romance
—
the ideal place to explore gender and
love” can be found here.
María T. Ramos-García's “Representations of Otherness in Paranormal Romance: Nalini Singh and J.R. Ward” is summarised by Philippa B here.
I've now come across a couple of reports on the recent Georgette Heyer conference. Sophie Weston mentions that
A terrific paper from Vanda Wilcox made
the point that, however precise Heyer’s grasp of strategic issues at
Waterloo might have been, her officers “embody World War I values and
leadership style”. At the same time Heyer’s other ranks (gorgeous Gideon
Ware’s straight-talking soldier servant, for instance) are basically
WWI Tommies in red coats, rather than Wellington’s rapists and
pillagers. Convinced me completely.
Her full report can be found here. The evening discussion session is described here by Nicola Cornick.
On 29 June, at the Gendered Emotions in History conference held at the University of Sheffield there was a paper on romance, presented by:
Agnes Arnold-Forster (QMUL) - Gender, Emotions, and Professional Identity in Twentieth Century Medical Mills and Boon Novels
The EUPOP2018 conference will be held from July 24th – 26th, 2018. One of the keynote speeches is by
Professor Petr A. Bilek (Charles University, Prague)
Distant Encounters of the Third Kind: Why Is Popular Culture Not Popular within Central European University Curricula?
Here are the new entries, recently added by Christina Martinez and me.
Leonzini, Alexandra, 2018.
‘“All the Better to Eat You With”: The Eroticization of the Werewolf and the Rise of Monster Porn in the Digital Age.’ Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture.
Ed. Ina Batzke, Eric C. Erbacher, Linda M. Heß, Corinna Lenhardt.
Bielefeld: transcript. 269-294. [“Starting her analysis with
19th-century horror fiction before moving to 20th-century films and
21-century romance and erotic literature, Leonzini traces the changes in
the construction of the gendered and sexualized body of the figure of
the werewolf” (12) and there is therefore quite a lot of reference to
romance, which is deemed to have laid the groundwork for modern monster
porn. Excerpt.]
Lowery, Karalyne, 2018.
"The Militarized Shapeshifter: Authorized Violence and Military Connections as an Antidote to Monstrosity." University of Toronto Quarterly 87.1: 196-213. Abstract.
O'Mahony, Lauren. 2017.
"Death and the Australian Rural Romance Novel." TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, vol. (Supplement 45), Oct. 2017, pp. 1-14. [Full text]
Salvador Miguel, Nicasio, 1995.
¿Hay precedentes de la novela rosa? Letras de la España contemporánea. Homenaje a José Luis Varela, ed. N. Salvador Miguel (Alcalá de Henares: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos): 319-327. [Full text]
Suman [Sigroha], 2018.
"Gendered Migrations and Literary Narratives: Writing Communities in South Asian Diaspora." Millennial Asia 9.1: 93-108.[Full text]
[On "educated skilled women from South Asia who migrate as ‘trailing
spouses’" and turn to romance-writing as an alternative, portable
career.]
Turner, Katherine. 2017.
"Daphne Du Maurier's Mary Anne: Rewriting the Regency Romance as Feminist History." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 54-77. [Abstract]
Vitackova, Martina, 2018.
"Representation of racial and sexual ‘others’ in Afrikaans popular romantic fiction by Sophia Kapp." Tydskrif vir letterkunde 55.1. 122-133. Abstract and link to pdf
"Postmillennial femininities in the popular romance novel." Journal of Gender Studies. Published online: 28 Aug 2017. Abstract
McAlister, Jodi, and Hsu-Ming Teo, 2017.
"Love in Australian Romance Novels." The Popular Culture of Romantic Love in Australia. Ed. Hsu-Ming Teo. North Melbourne, VIC: Australian Scholarly Publishing, pp.194-222.
McLeod, Dion, 2017.
"'Try-error-try-it': Love, loss, and the subversion(?) of the heteronormative romance story in Will Grayson, Will Grayson." Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature 25.1: 73-94. Abstract
"I gentiluomini si prendono per la gola: cibo e identità nei romanzi di Georgette Heyer". Lingua, Traduzione, Letteratura 1: 75-89. [Diana wrote to me to notify me of the publication of this article and her translation of the title is: "The way to a gentleman's heart is through his stomach: food and identity in Georgette Heyer's novels."]
林芳玫/Lin, Fang-mei.
"性別化東方主義：女性沙漠羅曼史的重層東方想像/Gendering Orientalism: Women's Desert Romance and the Multiplicity of Oriental Imagination." Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, vol. 13, no. 1-2, 2016, pp. 174-200. [There is an abstract in English, even though the paper is not.]
There's a high proportion of theses/dissertations in this round-up of new additions to the Romance Wiki Bibliography but I'll start with one which I haven't actually added to it, because it isn't exactly about romance, though it does mention romance a few times: "Breaking the Cycle of Silence: The Significance of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction," a PhD thesis
by Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek), which can be downloaded here.
Driscoll, Beth, Lisa Fletcher and Kim Wilkins, 2016.
"Women, Akubras and Ereaders: Romance Fiction and Australian Publishing." The Return of Print?: Contemporary Australian Publishing. Ed. Emmett Stinson and Aaron Mannion. Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing. 67-87. [I was very pleased to be cited in this article but unfortunately I think the information actually came from a post I wrote about Australian romance rather than, as stated, from my For Love or Money. I just thought I should mention that in case someone followed the link and then consulted FLoM to find more details.]
'Cultural Futurity and the Politics of Recovery: Mary Renault's Ambivalent Romances.' MFS Modern Fiction Studies 62.3: 462-80. Abstract
Fekete, Maleah, 2016.
"Social Differences in Taste: Investigating Romance Reading." 2016
SURF Conference Proceedings [This is a conference paper but outlines the
direction of a larger project in which the student is attempting to assess whether Radway's findings about readers looking to romance for nurturance were ever correct by speaking to modern readers (many of whom are reading books with similar elements to those preferred by Radway's readers). The student concludes that Radway was wrong and "the real reason women read is to feel sexually self-actualized - that is, reach their highest potential as sexually active women". However, given that this explanation does not explain the existence of a market for "sweet" romances, I feel it must be a generalisation which should not be assumed to apply to all romance readers.]
“Virginity Always Comes Twice: Virginity and Profession, Virginity and Romance.” Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars. Eds. Louise D’Arcens and Juanita Feros Ruys. Turnhout: Brepols. 335-69.
Place: Sheffield, UK Date:
Saturday 17 and Thursday 22 September
Time:
2-2:30pm (Saturday); 4:45-5:15pm (Thursday)
Val Derbyshire believes the books have genuine literary value. In her
lecture, and in the accompanying graphic novel, she has a lot of fun
arguing the case.
The Genre World of Romance in Twenty-First Century Australia
Place: Room 346, Humanities Building, Sandy Bay Campus, University of Tasmania
Date: 23rd Sep 2016
Time: 1:00-2:00pm
Lisa Fletcher, Beth Driscoll, and Kim Wilkins report on the findings from a project funded by the Romance Writers of
America in 2015, which was the first phase of a larger project on
Australian popular fiction (funded through an ARC Discovery Grant
2016-2018). Our aim in the first phase was to generate new knowledge
about romance in Australia by asking this research question: how do the
interactions between romance fiction texts and their national and
international writing and publishing communities build and maintain the
genre in Australia? We propose the concept of the “genre world” as an
analytical tool for examining the relationship between the textual
conventions by which we typically define genre and the conventional
collective behaviours and activities that govern the production of genre
texts.
Romance Conference of the Popular and American Culture Association (PCA/ACA)
12 – 15 April 2017 – San Diego, CA
The topic of romantic love suffuses popular culture. In
turn, the popular culture of romantic love shapes real life social
practices, from dating to weddings to holiday shopping. PCA/ACA Romance
welcomes any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic
related to romance, including the following: art;
literature; philosophy;
radio;
film; television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other
online storytelling. We are deeply interested in popular romance both
within and outside of mainstream
popular culture, now or in the past, anywhere in the world. Scholars,
romance writers, romance readers, and any combination of the three are
welcome: you do not need to be an academic
to be part of the Romance area.
If you
wish to organize a roundtable, special session, or a film screening,
please contact the Area Chairs. We have had great success with film
screenings for the past several years and would
be interested in hosting another one.
As we
do every year, the Romance area will meet in a special Open Forum to
discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the
field of Popular Romance Studies. All are welcome
to attend.
Submit a proposal or abstract (200-300 words) proposal or abstract through the PCA/ACA website, and ONLY through that website,
at conference.pcaaca.org.
If you wish to submit a panel
for the conference, all presenters must submit individually through the
website, and then notify the Area Chairs of your intentions to present
together. Please do not include panel colleagues on the electronic
submission as this confuses the program. Instructions
for submission can be found at https://conference.pcaaca.org/help/conference/submitting-proposals-conference.
Do not
simultaneously submit the same proposal to multiple areas. Doing so
will result in your proposal being disqualified and your paper being
refused by the PCA/ACA. Per PCA/ACA guidelines,
a person may present only one paper at
the annual meeting, regardless of subject area. If you try to submit to
two areas, the master program will not accept your proposals (which may
result
in your paper not being accepted in either area).
Submission Deadline: October 1, 2016
Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.
If you have any questions as all, please contact the area chairs:
Dr. Heather Schell Dr. Jodi McAlister
George Washington University University of Tasmania
In the Canary Islands, Dr. María-Isabel González-Cruz (Associate Professor, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) is leading a project on:
Discourse, Gender and Identity in a Corpus of Popular Romance Fiction Novels on the Canaries and Other Atlantic Islands [Discursos, género e identidad en un corpus de novela rosa inglesa ambientada en Canarias y otras islas atlánticas] (Reference FFI2014-53962-P)
The novels in this corpus are all set, wholly or partially, in the Atlantic islands (mostly the Canaries) and are written by English Harlequin/ Mills & Boon female authors. The project begins with a corpus of 20 novels set in the Canaries, while the corpus on Madeira and other islands has just begun to be built, including only 2 novels at the moment. The texts cover a time span of almost five decades, from 1958 to 2004, which allows for an analysis of the evolution of their discourse.
The protagonists are usually a native islander hero, or an Englishman with local ancestors, who falls in Jove with an English heroine who either visits or settles temporarily on one of the islands, which are typically described as a paradise with very different sociocultural traditions. Both the narrator and the characters are aware of the sociocultural and linguistic differences and often make reference to them. This provides an interesting framework and material to carry out a variety of analyses related to a number of challenging issues, including identity and otherness, paradise discourse, and intercultural and even linguistic contact, since the texts are written in English but interspersed with Spanish and Canarian (also Portuguese) terms and expressions. These words and phrases perform different communicative functions and reach a wide international readership who become familiar with them. This may contribute, to some extent, to their diffusion and eventual adoption by readers of English or other speech communities, as González-Cruz (2011b) has argued. [...]
In short, our purposes in this Research Projects are as follows:
to carry out an interdisciplinary study of the texts we have compiled so far
to keep searching for more books in order to enlarge both corpora, the main Canarian corpus and the one referring to other Atlantic islands,
to make a comparative analysis of the novels set in this area.
-----
I don't know which novels are included in the 20-book corpus. Can you think of any books you think should be included? I can pass on any suggestions.
-----
Dr Lisa Fletcher recently announced on the RomanceScholar listserv that she's
part of a research team just awarded a 3-year (2016-2018) Australia
Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant of A$316,000 to study
21st-century Australian popular fiction, including romance. This
interdisciplinary project brings
together researchers from the University of Queensland (Kim Wilkins,
David Carter), the University of Melbourne (Beth Driscoll), and the
University of Tasmania (me).
Our project summary: This project intends to conduct a
systematic examination of 21st-century Australian popular fiction, the
most significant growth area in Australian trade publishing since the
turn of the century. Its three areas of investigation
are the publishing of Australian popular fiction; the
interrelationships between Australian popular fiction and Australian
genre communities; and the textual distinctiveness of Australian popular
novels in relation to genre. Research is designed to centre
on 30 novels across three genres, building a comprehensive picture of
the practices and processes of Australian popular fiction through
detailed examination of trade data, close reading of texts, and
interviews with industry figures.
-----
The maps of Australia and the Canary Islands came from Wikimedia Commons and are either in the public domain or made available under a Creative Commons licence.
[From the RWA] Romance Writers of America is proud
to announce the recipients of its annual Academic Research Grant
competition. The grant program seeks to develop and support academic
research devoted to genre romance novels, writers, and readers.
Jonathan Andrew Allan, Ph.D., Brandon University: The Optimism of Happily Ever After.
RWA awarded funding to Jonathan Andrew Allan's project "The Optimism of
Happily Ever After." His proposed research seeks to explore one of the
most critically maligned aspects of romance, the happy ending, or, the
emotionally satisfying ending, via Affect Theory.
Drs. Beth Driscoll, University of Melbourne, Lisa Fletcher,
University of Tasmania, and Kim Wilkins, University of Queensland: The
Genre World of Romance in 21st Century Australia. RWA awarded
funding to Drs. Driscoll, Fletcher, and Wilkins' project "The Genre
World of Romance in 21st Century Australia." The researchers plan to
create detailed case studies of three authors at different stages in
their careers. The case studies will include analysis of the creative
processes for one particular book by each author using textual analysis
of the books and in-depth interviews with each author. They will also
include interviews with the other significant players involved in the
creation of and publication of each book. This research will present
romance writers and their books in a wider artistic and commercial
context.
Jessica Taylor, Ph.D., University of Toronto: Professional Business Women: Romance Writers, Feminism and "Women's Work." RWA
awarded funding to Jessica Taylor for her project "Professional
Business Women." Taylor researches how writers, who can choose to define
their work any number of ways, sometimes pitting the creative and
artistic against the professional and commercial, can negotiate
interesting blends of the two. She studies how writers think and talk
about what they do as work and its value and significance.
In a newly published article, Kylie Mirmohamadi argues that
A number of the literary themes and preoccupations of nineteenth-century Australian society and literature loom large in today
’s rural romances. The most significant of
these shared concerns is with the idea of an Australian female type. Australian rural
romances work to produce an image of a
“typically”
(and yet ideal) Australian
heroine: hardworking, committed to community, resourceful and, when required,
assertive, including sexually. Journalists point to the
“
feisty
”
and
“
strong
”
qualities
of rural heroines. (9)
That might be called an observation on the gender politics of these novels. In addition, their
post-colonial context both informs and influences some of the recurring and
dominant motifs of Australian rural romance. These include the idea of rural land
as just inheritance, a site of belonging and home, and, importantly, a space for autochthonic place of return. The drama of the homecoming (or making) of the heroine
and the coming together of the romantic protagonists, in other words, takes place
against the background of larger, unresolved dramas of history still being played out
in Australia.
Landscape in colonised countries is never innocent. It is discursive as well as material
space, criss-crossed with competing claims of indigeneity and contested assertions of
ownership. To write about land in such countries is to enter culturally loaded
debates surrounding the questions of who owns territory, who can claim a belonging
to it and how land should be used. (10)
------
Mirmohamadi, Kylie, 2015.
"Love on the Land: Australian Rural Romance in Place." English Studies. Published online 19 Jan. 2015. Abstract
When Gabby Maait, Kat Mayo and Jennifer Wu discovered that the Sydney Writers' Festival was ignoring popular romance fiction, its writers and readers, they were angry - and then they got inventive.
They made a range of postcards which could be left at the festival to challenge perceptions of the genre. Bearing in mind that romance novels are often judged by their covers:
This "cover remix [...] features an Australian classic, My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, re-imagined as a chicklit romance."
This "cover remix [...] features The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wildere-imagined as a paranormal romance" because, as Kat points out
Today The Picture of Dorian Gray a classic work of literature,
and no critic would dismiss it because they think it will raise men’s
expectations of debauched lifestyles. Contrast this to romance fiction,
which is blamed for women having unrealistic expectations in
relationships, of being porn for women (nothing more than a masturbatory
aid rather than an expression of art or a form of literary
entertainment), or of being escapist and therefore too light for serious
review or analysis.
This one gives a clinch cover to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles ("A classic bodice-ripper ... without the happy ending") to make the point that "in our books women always win."
The covers were designed by Jennifer Wu, who's written about the project here. You can see more of her work on her website. She also has prints/iPhone and iPod cases/skins of the original artwork for these covers available for sale. Here's Tess, The Picture and My Brilliant Career.
To belittle romance fiction is to belittle women. To read romance fiction is to confront the strength of women, the variety of
their experience, and the validity of their aspirations and accomplishments
I think Jennifer, Kat and Gabby have given us a very impressive taste of their "aspirations and accomplishments."
In 2013, Curtin University, in association with Romance Writers of Australia presents the inaugural Elizabeth Jolley Conference, Reading and Writing Romance in the 21st Century, a one-day academic conference on romance writing. The conference is presented as part of the Romance Writers of Australia 22nd Annual Conference to be held on August 16-18, 2013.
Of interest to academics, students and scholars of romance writing, as well as romance writers and readers, the conference will explore critical understandings of romance writing and the cultural significance of romance writing and its audiences.
….there is no one representative romance novel. (Bly, 2010 p61)
The meaning of ‘romance fiction’ in the twenty first century has become complex, diverse and wide-ranging. At a time when the future of books, reading and fiction are hotly debated topics, the many sub-genres of romance (and romance-driven general fiction) continue to be bestsellers. In light of its continued popularity, as well as increasing academic and critical attention, it is timely to consider how our understandings of romance fiction have changed. So too, we might consider the way in which the constitution, demands and desires of its audience has shifted. For, just as there is more than one type of romance, it is becoming clear that there is more than one type of romance reader.
This conference invites papers that explore the notion of reading and writing romance in the twenty first century. Whilst the genre of contemporary romance fiction is the main focus, we also welcome contributions that situate romance fiction in its historical context, or explore its place in mainstream and literary fiction. We particularly welcome papers that focus on Australian authors and audiences.
Among the questions the conference seeks to ask are: Has the increased connectivity and social networking enabled by the internet and e-publishing helped bring romance fiction into the mainstream? Or have its readers just become more vocal, connected and better able to share their passion? How well does contemporary romance fiction reflect shifts in relationships, marriage and sexuality? Is romance fiction bound to
reflect normative social narratives, or can it offer more challenging representations of gender, race, sexuality and class? To what extent does contemporary romance fiction reflect key socio-political concerns such as indigenous issues, ethnicity, multiculturalism or Pacific Rim relations?
Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):
• Explorations of the contemporary audiences for contemporary romance fiction
• Beyond the pseudonym: who is writing romance fiction today?
• The relation and position of fanfiction in the genre
• The impact of e-publishing and social networking on romance fiction writers and readers
• Changes to the marketing, packaging and branding of contemporary romance fiction
• The demographic breakdown of romance fiction readers and writers
• The impact of e-readers on the public/private impacts of reading romance fiction
• Explorations of genre boundaries: the relation of romance fiction to women’s fiction, chick lit and other genres
• Cross-genre pollination: the impact of paranormal romance on the genre and its readership
• The relation of romance fiction to mainstream and literary fiction
• Analyses of contemporary romance fiction covers and cover art
• Explorations of the ideal romance fiction reader
• Explorations of romance fiction sub-genres such as historical romance, medical, gothic, paranormal romance
Abstracts of no more than 300 words are due by January 11th 2013 [...] Successful submissions will be invited to submit full papers for consideration for publication in a special issue of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture (full papers due June 2013).
Last week I made an appearance at the Australian Women Writers blog, talking about Australian romance (you'll have to scroll down the page a little to get to my guest-post). More expert opinions on the topic are to be found in
Sold by the Millions: Australia’s Bestsellers
Editor: Toni Johnson-Woods and Amit Sarwal
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Date Of Publication: March 2012
The book contains a chapter by Hsu-Ming Teo on "Britishness and
Australian Popular Fiction: From the Mid-nineteenth to the Mid-twentieth
Centuries":
She concludes that while children’s and men’s popular fiction
“successfully indigenised or even Americanised after the Second World
War, the same was not necessarily true of the bulk women’s romance
novels, even at century’s end.” The reason for this, according to Teo,
were the “conditions of national and international Anglophone publishing
in the twentieth century” that to a large extent “shaped Australian
popular fiction in such a way that women’s romance novels remained tied
to the apron strings of empire, attentive to the demands of British
editors and an overseas market even as a distinctive postcolonial
‘Australianness’ was
asserted.” (xi)
and a chapter by Juliet Flesch, "The Wide Brown Land and the Big Smoke: The Setting of Australian Popular Romance":
Juliet Flesch in her chapter, focusing on the mass appeal of
Australian popular romances, examines how far the Australia’s romance
novelist’s “portrayal of the natural or built environment” and
Australian society “reflects Australian reality”? She concludes that
“the impressions overseas readers will gain from some Australian romance
novels at least is reasonably accurate,” as “the society described in
modern Australian romances reflects the way Australians like to see
themselves––egalitarian, optimistic, resilient, welcoming, etc.” (xii)
I haven't read the book (it's not out till March) but more details and a link to an excerpt (which includes the foreword) can be found here.
theory – to be explained at length in my PhD thesis – that the portrayal
of “monsters” such as vampire and werewolves became more human as the
othering of marginalized people in the real world became less and less
acceptable. This also fits in with my findings that the 1960s were the
turning point where the portrayal of former monsters began to change.
And of course supernatural beings make excellent metaphors for the
marginalized group of the author’s choice.
A different way of creating "Others" is explored by Melanie Tannenbaum. It's called "benevolent sexism" and it's
a formal name for all of those comments and stereotypes that can somehow
feel both nice and wrong at the same time, such as the belief that
women are “delicate flowers” that need to be protected by men, or the
notion that women have the special gift of being “more kind and caring”
than their male counterparts. And yes, it might sound complimentary, but
it still counts as sexism.
Jonathan Frantzen writes inThe New Yorker about Edith Wharton and Steve Donoghue is
appalled.
It wasn’t just Franzen’s pseudo-professorial leather-elbow-patch “let
us now consider” air of arrogance, either, although you know you’re
going to get plenty of that in a piece that begins, “The older I get,
the more I’m convinced that a fiction writer’s oeuvre is a mirror of the
writer’s character.” [...] the real horror of this piece is the fact that Franzen only needs
four paragraphs to get to what’s really on his mind: Edith Wharton
wasn’t hot. See, Franzen’s idea is that we like to root for our authors, and that process is facilitated by every flaw
the author has. Edith Wharton “wasn’t pretty,” and so, according to
Franzen, she spent the rest of her writing life exorcising her shame and
anger over that fact in her fiction. Franzen can actually look at a
book like The House of Mirth and then write something like
this: “The novel can be read as a sustained effort by Wharton to imagine
beauty from the inside and achieve sympathy for it, or, conversely, as a
sadistically slow and thorough punishment of the pretty girl she
couldn’t be.”
I know we don’t hire Jonathan Franzen to be a great literary critic. We hire him to be a bloatedly overrated
literary sexist (the death of Norman Mailer left the position open).
But even so, it would never have occurred to Franzen in a million years
to get four paragraphs into a piece about F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest
Hemingway and then start talking about how physically attractive they were – and even if he tried it, no New Yorker editor would have allowed it to see print.
The Queen of Sheba was known for her wisdom and her wealth:
Almost 3,000 years ago, the ruler of Sheba, which spanned modern-day Ethiopia
and Yemen, arrived in Jerusalem with vast quantities of gold to give to
King Solomon. Now an enormous ancient goldmine, together with the ruins
of a temple and the site of a battlefield, have been discovered in her
former territory. [...]
Sheba was a powerful incense-trading kingdom that prospered through
trade with Jerusalem and the Roman empire. The queen is immortalised in
Qur'an and the Bible, which describes her visit to Solomon "with a very
great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold and
precious stones ... Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, and a
very great quantity of spices."
Although little is known about
her, the queen's image inspired medieval Christian mystical works in
which she embodied divine wisdom, as well as Turkish and Persian
paintings, Handel's oratorio Solomon, and Hollywood films. Her
story is still told across Africa and Arabia, and the Ethiopian tales
are immortalised in the holy book the Kebra Nagast.
Hers is said
to be one of the world's oldest love stories. The Bible says she visited
Solomon to test his wisdom by asking him several riddles. Legend has it
that he wooed her, and that descendants of their child, Menelik – son
of the wise – became the kings of Abyssinia.
Another mine, and another love story, are depicted in Marie Bjelke Petersen's Jewelled Nights, "written in 1923" (Delamoir 115), which was turned into a 1925 silent movie starring and produced by Louise Lovely. This film has now
been brought back to life.
Adapted from a novel, the film follows a 'social butterfly' who runs away from her Melbourne home to a mining boom in Tasmania. She wants to restore her family's fortunes which were lost on the Melbourne Cup.
The film's restorer Bernard Lloyd says it is an epic love story.
"She
dresses as her brother and she comes to Tasmania because she's heard
that in Tasmania there are riches to be made, there's a mining boom
going on," he said. "There, on the mining fields, she finds something much more valuable; true love."
The novel features a heroine who disguises herself as a man, the film was "advertised as being based on 'Marie Bjelke Petersen's virile story'" (Delamoir 119) and
at the novel's romantic climax--at that narrative point when it could
be expected that gender matters the most--Bjelke Petersen empties out
the categories male/female. Salarno actually seems disappointed at
realising that 'Dick' is really Elaine. Indeed, he has to reason himself
around to accepting it:
the fact should not make any vital difference between them; for
was not his little pal just the same? His personality, his delightful
ways, his high courage, the qualities he most admired in him, these
could surely not be affected by the circumstances of sex. Besides, his
affection for his young mate was by this time of too deep a nature to be
affected by the newly-gained knowledge. (75)
Bjelke Petersen goes against the romantic grain by arguing that, in the
end, gender is irrelevant to the formation of the couple.
Simultaneously, gender is shown to be irrelevant to the achievement of
'masculine' success as a miner; with some guidance from Salarno, 'Dick'
is just as good at finding the mineral as the 'typically Australian'
men. (Delamoir 123-24)
-----
Delamoir, Jeanette. “Marie Bjelke Petersen’s ‘Virile Story’: Jewelled Nights, Gender Instability, and the Bush." Hecate 29.1 (2003): 115-131.
Michelle Douglas, the author of Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep (2009), "made my heroine and hero, each in their own way, artists" and I was intrigued by the ways in which the novel touches on matters related to art and books and hints at possible similarities between them.
The novel is dedicated "To Varuna, The Writers' House" and, as Douglas has written, "The inspiration for Bachelor Dad On Her Doorstep came from a setting: the Australian Blue Mountains where I spent a week on a writers’ retreat," presumably at Varuna, which "is in the World Heritage Area, the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia." Since Douglas's "favourite place in the mountains is Leura – seriously cute, plus it has one of my all-time favourite bookshops [...] I based my fictitious town of Clara Falls on Leura."
Jaz Harper, Douglas's heroine, owns a bookshop on the "main street" (15) of Clara Falls, so the novel literally places books at the heart of the community. In the final chapter a book fair gives Clara Falls the chance to demonstrate that "In this town [...] we pull together" (267); there are "Oodles and oodles of people. All mingling and laughing out the front of her bookshop" (265) and "a cheer went up when the townsfolk saw her" (266). Like Jaz's biker friends, this chapter seems to suggest that "supporting independent bookshops is a good cause" (146).
Jaz, who also "mean[s] to open an art gallery" (164), brings together books and art when she decides to decorate the bookshop, formerly owned by her mother, with a mural of the dead Frieda:
She'd sketched in the top half of Frieda's face with a fine pencil and the detail stole his [Connor's] breath. [...] Beneath her fingers, her mother's eyes and brow came alive - so familiar and so ... vibrant. Jaz had honed her skill, her talent, until it sang. The potential he'd recognised in her work eight years ago - the potential anyone who'd seen her work couldn't have failed to recognise - had come of age. (112)
Brief as this passage is, it seems to suggest that the production of the best art requires practice as well as raw talent and this lesson is emphasised later in the novel when Jaz encourages Connor Reed, the hero and Jaz's former boyfriend, to pick up some charcoals and try sketching for the first time in years:
He'd lost count of how many pictures he'd drawn. [...] Jaz sighed and chuckled and teased him, just like she used to do. She pointed to one of the drawings and laughed. 'Is that supposed to be a bird?' 'I was trying to give the impression of time flying.' 'It needs work,' she said with a grin. [...] 'But look at how you've captured the way the light shines through the trees here. It's beautiful. [...] You can draw again, Connor.' (174-75)
Jaz forces him to draw because she wants him "to know its joys, its freedoms once more ... to bow to its demands and feel whole" (170). This perhaps describes the experience of creativity not just of visual artists, but also of those who are creative in other media, including writers.
In addition, it seemed to me that the novel explores what can be classified as "art." In their youth Jaz and Connor used to
take their charcoals and sketch pads to one of the lookouts. She'd sit on a rock hunched over her pad, intent on capturing every single detail of the view spread out before her, concentrating fiercely on all she saw. Connor would lean back against a tree, his sketch pad propped against one knee, charcoal lightly clasped, eyes half-closed, and his fingers would play across the page with seemingly no effort at all. Their high school art teacher had given them identical marks [...]. Connor's drawings had [...] captured an essence, the hidden potential of the thing. Connor had drawn the optimistic future. (50)
It is perhaps logical, given the nature of his talent, that Connor "hadn't picked up a stick of charcoal since" (42) Jaz left town and he no longer envisaged an "optimistic future" for himself; he
relinquished his dream of art school. 'I run a building contractor's business now here in Clara Falls.' (41)
However, although Jaz is led to believe that Connor has "given up his art" (52) and is now merely "Painting shop signs [...] All that potential wasted" (50-51), and despite the fact that he believes he has "turned his back on art to become a carpenter" (169), when Jaz sees the "handmade wood-turned furniture" (189) he has made, "She marvelled at their craftsmanship, at the attention paid to detail, at the absolute perfection of each piece" (189) and tells him that "you didn't give up your art. You just ... redirected it" (190).
For her part, Jaz is now "a world-class tattoo artist, if Frieda's boasts could be believed" (43) and despite the fact that she herself used to think that "Connor had more talent in his little finger than she possessed in her whole body. She merely drew what was there, copied what was in front of her eyes" (50), in fact when she creates a tattoo it
wasn't just any simple tattoo. It was an indelible photograph captured on this man's arm for ever. It was a work of art. (152)
To the man who has been tattooed, however, it is "a memorial" (153) to his dead daughter. Thus, like Connor's carpentry, the tattoo is art which is very functional.
Art, this novel seems to suggest, is not limited to 'high' culture, but can be found in creations which might be described as 'craft,' or 'popular culture.' Indeed, one might even wish to add to that list the work of Mr Sears, the baker. His carrot cake "tasted divine" (101) and he certainly behaves as though he considers his creations to be special: "he placed each of the three cakes in a separate cardboard box with the same care and reverence mothers showed to newborn babies" (146).
---------
Douglas, Michelle. Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep. Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2009.
