CFP: February 2027, Normandy

International conference ‘Writing and Reading Romance Literature in Contemporary Worlds: Changes and Continuities in 20th- and 21st-Century Societies’

GRIC, University of Le Havre Normandy, 2–3–4 February 2027.

Conference languages: English and French.

General framework of the conference
The ‘obvious’ nature of romance as a literary genre sometimes tends to obscure the diversity of its transformations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Far from constituting a stable or universally defined category, romance encompasses multiple subgenres that range from descriptive narratives (e.g., campus romance, cowboy romance) to warnings to readers, as in the case of Dark Romance, while the set of practices and ideas that shape its production (authors, publishers) and consumption (readers) remain largely unexplored. This conference invites participants to examine the concrete experiences, uses, and appropriations that seem to define the romance novel as written and read today, thereby constructing a national and international space centred on the romance genre. Indeed, given the cultural and economic interest that romance generates in contemporary societies, Romance Studies brings together researchers from multiple countries and disciplines: literature and history, as well as sociology of culture, economics, and visual studies etc.
 

The State of Romance in the 21st Century
Since romance is traditionally associated with female authorship and a predominantly female readership – though these categories are not exclusive – and because at the heart of romance lies a love story in which a happy ending is one of the key genre markers, questions of gender abound in the narrative and are embodied in the characters. Thus, the portrayal of the critique of patriarchy in the 1980s (e.g. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, 1984) preceded the portrayal of gender equality since 2000 (e.g. Boussahba, Temps des médias, 2021). Despite the political and legal achievements of the 20th century, notably women’s access to the right to vote in many countries, equality in law does not guarantee equality in practice, something that women and men continue to demand. By denouncing inequalities in the workplace or in access to personal time, as well as medical discrimination or the violence of the non-consensual appropriation of the female body, Romance (overwhelmingly so, despite a few reactionary productions) contributes to the reformulation of this democratic and egalitarian ideal both in society and in the private sphere. The centrality of exclusion affects the social lives of women and men and largely shapes the plot, characters, and romance fiction written since 2000—a genre officially banned in certain countries where gender-based violence and restrictions dominate legislation and daily life.
 

Since 2000, the affinity between democracy and Romance has been reflected in the fictional portrayal of obstacles to equality – obstacles that are invariably overcome by the end of the plot. How might we define this relationship between democracy and romance? Is it because romance is produced in a democracy that it sells well there, or is it ultimately merely a vehicle for the most widespread ideas at any given time? What role do postcolonial romances play in the critique of relations between former colonised territories and their former metropolitan powers? Does Romance have educational potential for the wide variety of groups seeking to reflect on their political choices in the broadest sense? The erosion of individual freedoms advocated by illiberal parties or alliances seems intent on reshuffling the social and political deck to the benefit of gender, class and racial inequalities: could one imagine romance fiction produced in support of an illiberal state that would still find its readership, both nationally and internationally?
 

This conference, titled ‘Writing and Reading Romance in Contemporary Worlds: Changes and Continuities in 20th- and 21st-Century Societies,’ aims to foster critical and historical reflection on the romance genre by examining the dynamics of its construction, renewal, and reconfiguration in the 20th and 21st centuries. This conference invites participants to consider a range of perspectives: the transformations of the genre within contemporary societies; turning points in authors’ careers; the history of publishing houses, as well as the emerging types of romance genres, of their modes of publication, and reading practices.

This invitation to reflectively consider the history of romance raises questions about the nature of these moments of construction and reconstruction in the 20th and 21st centuries. Can we speak of specific moments of transformation? Or rather, of a more continuous evolution? How do female and male participants (authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers) contribute to the production and consumption of romance novels? What are the obstacles and resistance to this cultural model? Has romance, now an indispensable part of culture, opened up a new field or a new mode of cultural dissemination? What roles do media formats—particularly visual ones (films and TV movies)—play in the international dissemination of romance?

Papers may address, amongst other approaches, the following aspects:
- Types of romance and typology. As the sea and the ocean are spaces worthy of exploration, papers on examples of ‘maritime romances’ will enable us to reflect on this type of romance and to characterise these spaces, which are often secondary in Romance literature. The conference day devoted to ‘maritime romances’ forms part of a major, interdisciplinary research project at the University of Le Havre Normandy. We also welcome proposals on ‘ecological romances’ to begin exploring this genre.
- Key Players in Romance Fiction. Whether because they are new entrants to the field or have revised their strategies, we would like to gain a better understanding of publishing houses and their catalogues; libraries and their romance sections; and bookshops specialising in romance.
We would also like to gain a better understanding of the changes affecting female authors, their CVs and their working methods. How do all these professionals connect with readers? Do readers have collective ways of meeting and exchanging ideas amongst themselves?
- Moments of construction and reconstruction of romance in 20th- and 21st-century
societies. We are looking for proposals based on studies over time: a study of a career, a study of romance novel production in a particular country, a study of economic profitability, a study of romance employment sector; a study of changes in romance readership; a study of technological developments in the distribution of romance novels; a study of adaptations for the screen; a study of the globalisation of the romance novel market; a study of romance novel production within a single language or country.

Conference Format
The conference will be held in person on the Lebon campus of the University of Le Havre, Normandy.
Conference languages: English, French.
 

Call for Papers. Paper proposals must be submitted by December 3, 2026, to the following
email address: myriam.boussahba-bravard@univ-lehavre.fr. Proposals must be submitted as a single document (.doc) containing the following information:
- A short biographical sketch of the author (150–200 words);
- An abstract summarizing the paper (300–400 words).
 

Doctoral students are welcome.
 

Important Dates:
- Deadline for submitting a paper proposal: December 3, 2026.
- Notification of accepted papers: December 18, 2027.
- Conference dates : February 2–3–4, 2027.

Scientific Committee:
Anne Besnault (Senior Lecturer, ERIAC, University of Rouen Normandy, France)
Myriam Boussahba (Professor, GRIC, University of Le Havre Normandy, France)
Amy Burge (Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom)
Florence Cabaret (Senior Lecturer, ERIAC, University of Rouen Normandy, France)
Delphine Chedaleux (Lecturer, Compiègne University of Technology, France)
Joseph Crawford (Professor, University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
Virginie Douglas (Professor, GRIC, University of Le Havre Normandy, France)
Paloma Fresno (Professor, University of the Balearic Islands, Spain)
Nuno Medeiros (Senior Lecturer, University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Delphine Munos (Senior Lecturer, University of Liège, Belgium)
Dana Percec (Professor, West University of Timișoara, Romania)
Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bienkowska (Lecturer, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland)

Call for Papers: PCA/ACA 2027

Since the organisers want this to be shared, that's what I'm doing! 

 

Romance Area
Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)
March 24-27, 2027 – Boston, Massachusetts
“Only in a Romance Novel”

Some things only work in a romance novel.

The worlds of romance are filled with places, situations, people, careers, and even names we would reject as unrealistic in any other situation. From the overabundance of women with flowing red locks, men named “Cash,” women with tiny delicate waists, hot single hockey players, nannies working for amazing single dads, or stalkers with a heart of gold, some things seem over represented in romance novels.

For the 2027 conference, let’s take some time to explore these topics, what we love and hate about them; how they interact with the genre, subgenres, and tropes; and what they say about the state of the genre and society.

In particular, we pose these questions:
1) what are these overrepresentations? What careers, places, characteristics seem to come up over and over again?
2) where do these overrepresentations come from?
3) in the moments they do, why and how do authors push against these representations?

We encourage you to respond to these questions broadly, and to think not just about specific texts but also about their creators, consumers and critics, to understand the broader discussions in which these texts are implicated.

If this theme does not spark ideas, something else is pressing on your mind, or you simply want to pursue another intellectual passion, you are very welcome to do so.

Who we are

The Romance Area of the PCA is 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/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area. Undergraduates sponsored by an academic mentor are also welcome. Please see the Romance area on the PCA website for our policy for undergraduates; if the website is difficult to navigate, contact us and we’ll send you a copy of the policy.

The Romance area invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance. Past presenters have drawn on methods from literary studies, history, library sciences, sociology, film studies, and creative writing, to name the most common approaches—we’ve even had a presentation with puppets (you know who you are). We’ve loved all of these.

Finally, we are not interested solely in novels! The Romance area is open to engagements with all forms of media and culture that are concerned with romance, including, but not limited to, the following: art; literature; philosophy; radio and audio media; film and television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling; and apps, including dating apps.

Submit 250-word abstracts to pcaaca.org by October 31, 2026. One of us will review them within two weeks or so and notify you about our decision. You’ll hear more from us as the date approaches. 

Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

If you have any questions at all, please contact the area chairs:
Justina Clayburn - jumarn@gmail.com
(Co-chair coming soon)

Call for Papers: 11th IASPR (International Association for the Study of Popular Romance) Conference - 2027

29th, 30th of June and 1st of July, 2027

Universidad de Oviedo, Spain

 Here's the Call for Papers: 

The theme for IASPR 27 is Choosing Love, which marks our decision to turn toward hope in a world that is increasingly shaped by the lingering trauma of a global pandemic, ongoing wars, and deepening economic precarity. Popular romance narratives insist, quietly and defiantly, that better futures are not only imaginable but worth fighting for. We are keen to explore what it means to choose love as romance readers and scholars. As bell hooks reminds us: “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Popular romance is a literature of will as it imagines characters who choose connection over isolation, commitment over cynicism, and care over cruelty, often against considerable odds.

We invite submissions that engage with the theme of Choosing Love broadly and creatively. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Hope as resistance
• Care, ethics and romantic love
• Love in contexts of war, displacement, illness, and precarity
• HEA (happily ever after) and HFN (happy for now) as ideological stances
• Post pandemic romance
• Choosing love and identity
• Decolonial and global romance
• Love and civic power
• Love as world-building [speculative/ paranormal/ historical romance]
• Adaptation / romance across genres
• Finding and discovering love IRL and online
• Publishing romance
• Why readers choose romance

While our theme focuses on love, we are also open to papers that take different approaches to romance. In short, if it is about romance, we’re interested!

More details can be found here. Abstracts should be submitted by November 30, 2026.

Call for Papers: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association

123rd Annual Conference (Seattle, WA) – Nov. 12-15, 2026

More details about the conference can be found here. Specifically with respect to romance, Kristin Noone has put out this call for papers to the brand-new popular romance area:

Popular romance narratives are compellingly woven into popular culture, from the success of queer hockey phenomenon Heated Rivalry to the perpetual popularity of Hallmark rom-com movies, from historical or alternate-historical romances like Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series to the rise of romantasy and authors such as Sarah J. Maas. The romance tradition is rich and complex, appearing across various forms of media and spanning the globe.

For this special session, we invite papers and presentations which explore the diversity of popular romance narratives. This year's general PAMLA conference theme is “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” and submissions related to the distribution of power, aristocracy or inheritance, community and collective action, class or social structures (or challenges thereto), and revolutionary movements against traditional hierarchies are particularly welcome. However, we are open to all popular-romance themed proposals, regardless of how closely they adhere to the general conference theme!

Potential topics might include, for example:

-cultural memory, history, and the romance novel

-reading the romance as reparative - or investigating this concept

-heroes, anti-heroes, and masculinity

-aristocrats, billionaires, and power

-inheritance, histories, and haunting, and/or the Gothic

-representations of class, gender, race, and social structures

-romantasy, fantasy, and centering pleasure as activism

-popular romance trends, e.g. historical, queer, or dark romance

-fandom and community

-discussions of creative work in the field

-and more!

The deadline for abstracts is the 25th of May and should be submitted via the form on the website.

Call for Papers: Sports Romance

From JPRS:

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

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

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

Topics of interest may include but are not limited to:

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

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

CFP: International Women's Writing Online Conference

I got an email letting me know about this and since it mentions romance, I thought I'd share the call for papers:

 

International Women’s Writing Online Conference

Thursday 15^th to Friday 16^th January 2026

Online

 

This online conference will be an interdisciplinary, cross-period, and global exploration of the role and impact of women’s writing, which is dedicated to the discussion of a broad range of women’s writing from any time, period, and place. We will discuss the popular and the literary; bestsellers and genres; poetry and prose; screen and script; writing for games and digital spaces; creative non-fiction; life-writing, biography, and memoir; and journalism and other forms of cultural production.

We will be thinking and talking about the pasts, presents, and futures of women’s writing on a global scale. We will explore women’s voices and artistic practices; the changing landscape of and about women’s writing; forms and mediums; the archival and the digital; textual and sexual politics; resistance and re-imaginings; interventions and intersections; and all of this across a wide range of disciplines, time periods, and texts.

We hope you will join us for this exciting event, which will bring together scholars, researchers, students, and enthusiasts to share their research, insights, and perspectives in an open and inclusive atmosphere. We welcome submissions for individual twenty-minute papers as well as for full panels and workshops. And we are keen to explore women’s writing from any time period, as well as in any genre or form. Subjects can include (but are not bound by):

·       The portrayal and evolution of women’s writing across different periods and genres

·       Archives and memorialisation

·       Pasts, presents, and futures

·       Women’s writing on page, stage, and screen

·       The poetics of women’s writing

·       Creative practices and performance

·       Writing place and space

·       Bestsellers and the popular

·       Women writing for the screen

·       Cultural, historical, and social contexts

·       Reframing history and envisioning futures

·       Traditional and digital forms of women’s writing

·       The global and the local

·       Autoethnography and authorship; memory and memorialisation

·       The figure of the author: celebrity, fans, and representations

·       Race, class, gender, and resistance                     

·       Activism and protest; freedoms and oppression

·       Writing technologies

·       Women’s writing and pleasure

·       Intersectionality and dualities

·       Women’s literary canon

·       The speculative and the imaginary

·       Women in and writing games

·       Crime Fiction, the Gothic, and Horror

·       Bonkbusters, Romance, and Erotica

·       The pre- and post-#MeToo landscape

·       Multicultural approaches and practices

·       Women’s writing and form

·       Women’s writing and the market

·       The economics and politics of women’s writing

 

 

Submissions:

Proposals should include a title, an abstract of 250–300 words, a brief biographical note (up to 100 words), and contact details. Panel proposals are very welcome.

Please submit your proposals in a Word document to the team at womenswritingassociation@gmail.com by 12^th December 2025 making it clear that this is for the online conference. We encourage submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, including early career researchers, and postgraduate students. Interdisciplinary approaches and innovative methodologies are welcome. 

Please note that this will be a small online conference and we will shortly have two CFPs out for in-person conferences, which will be held at Falmouth University in June 2026 and Pescara University, Italy in September 2026.

All participants will be given free membership of the International Women’s Writing Association for a year.

Call for doctoral proposals in the field of Romance and/or Erotica at Falmouth University

Thought I'd add an image from the Falmouth University website showing where Falmouth is i.e. towards the tip of Cornwall (i.e. the lower left-hand corner of the UK).

The study of Romance and Erotica in their broadest forms is now being given more prominence in the academic field, albeit through often disparate strands. This is surprising given their popularity. For example, Romantic Fiction has long been one of the most popular genres of writing, outselling most other forms. However, despite its wide readership, it faces questions about the lack of diverse representation, as well as frequent attention being drawn to, for example, racist tropes of the othered body in both Romance and Erotica. Debates about the blurred boundaries surrounding pornography and Erotica similarly rage, as questions of ethics and morality circle.  

How are narratives of Romance/Erotica mediated through history? How do other cultures and societies represent and interrogate Romance/Erotica? How are images, narratives, and notions of Romance/Erotica read and understood through time and place? How do we navigate questions of consent? Bodily boundaries? Morality? Race? How do they engage with issues such as class? Capitalism? Power/control? Sex and sexualities? How do they respond to and shape attitudes towards contemporary cultural concerns such as digital media; pornography; gender roles; sexual relationships; sex work; consent; ageing; mental health; sexual and physical health; the law; politics; and crime. How do they engage with celebrity culture, fashion, and place?  

We are seeking ground-breaking, innovative, and challenging practice-based and critical research proposals on Romance and/or Erotica in their widest sense, including, but not limited to, Bonkbusters and bestsellers, soap operas and mini-series, Gothic and Pulp Romances, melodrama and fantasy, popular magazines and literary Erotica, Hollywood and Bollywood, Romcoms and sitcoms, high and low culture, the sensational and the scandalous, digital depictions and heartwarming tales, the private and the public, Hallmark and Pornhub. 

Proposals on creative writing, literature, history, fashion, illustration, film, TV, popular culture, performance studies, games, and many other genres and mediums will be considered. 

More details here. 

CFP: Book Series on Romance, Power and Desire

I'll transcribe the contents of this flyer below. I'm on the Board, as are some other romance scholars, so there's definitely an openness to proposals including/focussed on popular romance fiction, although obviously the series is very much not limited to that.

University of Wales Press

Romance, Power and Desire 

New Series from the University of Wales Press 

Romance, Power and Desire provides a focus for scholarly debates in the humanities around sexual/romantic power and agency, fantasy and social reality, relationships and sexual practices.

The series is global in scope and interdisciplinary in nature; it comprises of cutting-edge research in monographs and edited collections across a broad historical period, from the ancient world to the present day.

Series Editors: Dr Jo Parsons Falmouth University and Dr Meredith Miller Cardiff University

Would you like to write for this series? We’d love to hear from you. Please contact Chris Richards, Journals and Assistant Commissioning Editor, with your proposal, including a brief synopsis of the proposed work:  chris.richards@press.wales.ac.uk

To read more on the information we require at proposal stage, see our Publish With Us page https://www.uwp.co.uk/publish-with-us/ .

CFP: PCA Conference in Atlanta, April 2026

From their website:

The Romance Area of the National Popular Culture Association is soliciting abstracts for the next annual conference, to held April 8-11, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia.

CFP: Reading the Romance Reader

Upload your 250-word proposal to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2025

What does it mean to be a romance reader (or viewer, or listener, or any other type of consumer)? Forty years ago, “creators” and “audience” were understood as binary opposites, reader response theory felt like a cutting-edge approach to genre fiction, and the idea of “participatory culture” wasn’t even a gleam in Henry Jenkins’ eye. Since that time, both Romancelandia and the scholarly tools for understanding and navigating it have blossomed. Romance readers have more opportunities to communicate their preferences to authors, publishers, and other readers, giving them more influence over the genre. Multiple modalities mean that romance enthusiasts can access new narratives more immediately, in more locations, in more formats, and, if they choose, with less visibility. At the same time, the romance genre is enjoying a moment of public pride, and romance readers are visible—to the public, to each other, online, in real life, to publishers and to bookstores—in an unprecedented way.

We believe that romance scholarship has also entered a golden age (thank you, JPRS!), with scholars from different disciplines and different countries bringing fresh ideas, exploring new or overlooked texts and modalities, and introducing field-specific analytical tools that offer a richer understanding of people’s engagement with popular romance. We therefore think it’s past time to turn our collective attention to the consumers of popular romance. For our 2026 conference, we invite you to reread the romance reader (or viewer, listener, LARPer, etc.). Showcase your favorite romance community, show off your data, teach us how to use your methods, offer a case study of public engagement with romance, theorize the affordances of reading vs listening vs viewing the romance, or take a deep dive into the historical changes in what it means to be part of the audience for popular romance.

---

There are more details, which you can find here.  Note that:

"If you would rather explore some other aspect of popular romance right now, you are very welcome to ignore our theme and submit a proposal on something else."

and

"Scholars, romance writers, romance readers/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area." 

CFP: Love and Resistance: Popular Romance Fiction and the Right, 2015-2025

The first election of Donald Trump sparked a series of "Rogue" romance anthologies that framed love as resistance, and the romance genre as progressive and inclusive. Looking back after a decade, how has the genre registered and responded to ongoing political contexts--in the United States and elsewhere--of political radicalization, xenophobia, natalism, revived eugenicist policies, the demonization of "gender ideology" and affirmative action, the redefinition and constriction of citizenship, transphobia, etc.?

Following conversations initiated at the IASPR 2025 Conference held in Mexico City, this edited collection seeks to address both the progressive and conservative aspects of the genre: its progressive and utopian side and also its embrace of conservative and reactionary trends, both in the texts themselves and in the publishing, distribution, and readership aspects of the romance genre world.

We welcome proposals that address these issues in North America, although we are especially keen to include submissions that challenge the cultural hegemony of the “Global North” from within and beyond its geographical borders.

- The political economy of publishing
- Censorship of (and in) popular romance
- Translational practices as political acts
- Counternarratives that challenge US master narratives (meritocracy, manifest destiny, American Dream, exceptionalism)
- Power and authoritarian masculinities and hegemonic femininities
- Neoliberalism and hetero/homo normativity
- Conspiracies and reactionaries
- Imagining the future in dark times
- Representations of politicians and government
- Biopolitics and corporeal politics
- Geopolitics, nationalism and patriotism
- Unequal couples: class, precarity and poverty
- Reader and author resistance (and compliance)
- Whiteness and racialisation
- Violence, social order and criminalization
- Defending BIPOC histories and archives
- Anticipatory obedience and civil disobedience

Please submit 250-word abstracts and a brief professional bio note to Nattie Golubov, ngolubov@unam.mx, Eric Selinger ESELINGE@depaul.edu and Charlotte Ireland, c.ireland@bham.ac.uk, by August 18, 2025.

The collection will be published by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in collaboration with the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.

Call for Papers: Northeast Popular Culture Association virtual conference

NORTHEAST POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION, Virtual, October 9 to October 11, 2025
AREA: ROMANCE/POPULAR ROMANCE FICTION

Deadline: Tuesday, July 15th by 5pm EST

Contact email: Wendy Wagner wwagner@jwu.edu

The Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will host its 2025 annual conference this fall as a virtual conference from Thursday, October 9th, to Saturday, October 11th, 2025.

We are seeking paper proposals on the topic of Romance/Popular Romance Fiction for its annual conference.

We welcome a wide variety of papers related to romance and popular romance fiction. Possible approaches can include cultural studies, narrative analysis, issues of representation , production and dissemination of romance fiction, audience studies, the public uses of romance fiction/s, and more.

We are also interested in forming panels around some of the following topics:

· Romance and fanfiction – fandom as a training ground for developing romance writers

· The Romance industry and social media marketing

· Romance re-imagining itself – How does contemporary romance fiction take on and transform its own genre? How does it re-make the “pirate romance,” the “arranged marriage” trope, fairy tales and mythological re-tellings?

· Romance fiction in languages other than English

· Romance and disabilty

More information here.

CFP: Romantasy

 CFP Edited Collection: Feral: Romantasy and Its Readers

Editors: Kacy Tillman, University of Tampa, kacytillman@gmail.com
Sarah Walden, Baylor University, Sarah_Walden@baylor.edu

Proposals Due: June 30, 2025

 

This will be a book-length, peer-reviewed volume, and we plan to market it as a trade publication with the University of Iowa Press. We are committed to diverse representations of texts and fan experiences, especially given that the genre is often criticized (rightly so) for centering white, cishet women. This collection will include chapters on queer romantasy, romantasy and disability, romantasy and book bans, romantasy and race, and more. This is a highly interdisciplinary collection, so we encourage a variety of approaches.

We are currently looking for chapters that explore any of the following topics:
● Representations of race and ethnicity in romantasy
● Romantasy reception and BIPOC booktok creators 
● Adult readers of YA romantasy
● Romantasy and colonialism

 

Submission Guidelines: Please send the following to BOTH kacytillman@gmail.com and
Sarah_Walden@baylor.edu.
● Contact Information (name, email, phone, and preferred method of contact)
● Working title
● 200-word abstract
● Short professional bio
● Note on whether any of this research has been previously published

CFP: Conference Session Sponsored by the University of Tasmania

ROMANCING ACADEMIA: PLACING ROMANCE

Friday 22 August 2025

Wrest Point, Tasmania

 

The concept of location is a powerful one in popular romance studies, driving several recent conferences in the field. For Romancing Academia 2025, we want to extend this idea further to approach the genre from several angles in relation to the idea of ‘place.’ Place or setting is crucial to the romance narrative in many ways – whether it is a small town, a cabin in the mountains, a deserted island, or, on a broader scale, cities, states and nations. The dynamic concept of ‘place’ is equally useful to interrogate the place of the genre in institutions related to book culture, including academia and the publishing industry. In addition, as Catherine Roach notes, the “literary landscape, human community, and online discussion world” of the romance genre are together often described by readers and writers using the spatial metaphor of “Romancelandia” – the genre itself is therefore also a place (2016, p. 197). Through exploring these different interpretations – place as setting, status, or genre itself – this symposium is aimed towards mapping romance onto contemporary scholarship in book culture practices and literary studies, and bridging industry practices and scholarly engagement.

Proposed papers or roundtables should fit under the broad umbrellas of place as ‘setting,’ ‘status’ and ‘genre,’ and could be related to (but are not limited to): 

• “Romancelandia” and its different characteristics 
• Places as tropes (e.g., small town romances)
• Clothing and textiles as a marker of place and time in romance novels
• Food as a metaphor for place 
• Digital romance – virtual places and online spaces
• Media (ebooks, comics, paperback, etc) and reading spaces
• Modifications of the genre in different locations across the world
• Romance studies in academia/literary studies/in relation to other disciplines
• Publishing romance (or specific subgenres)
• The place of romance in public libraries 

We invite you to submit your 250-word abstracts and a brief bio by 16th May 2025 to romancingacademia@gmail.com.

 

More details here: https://willorganise.eventsair.com/2025-romance-writers-of-australia-conference/romancing-academia

CFP: Essay Collection on Laura Kinsale

From Alexandra Vasti:

Not One Word But True: Romance Authors and Scholars on Laura Kinsale

USA Today bestselling romance novelist and literature professor Alexandra Vasti is seeking abstract submissions for an edited collection of essays on New York Times bestselling romance novelist Laura Kinsale.

Over her thirty-year career as a RITA-award-winning writer of historical romance, Laura Kinsale produced twelve expansive and genre-defining novels. From the Medieval Hearts series with its extraordinary Middle English dialogue to the textual representation of receptive and expressive aphasia in Flowers from the Storm, Kinsale’s novels pushed at the edges of the romance genre both thematically and formally, challenging and upending its most familiar tropes for her devoted audience of millions of readers.

In this collection of essays, bestselling romance authors including Olivia Waite, Alexandra Vasti, and Freya Marske will reflect on Kinsale’s impact on the genre as a whole, as well as their own personal relationships with Kinsale’s work. From essays on metaphor, symbolism, and sentence construction to larger considerations of Kinsale’s immense global and chronological range, these authors will explore Kinsale’s work and contextualize her novels within the scope of romance currently being written and published.

In addition, scholars of romance are invited to consider Kinsale’s work from a critical lens. Her novels frequently include Orientalist stereotypes and villainous representations of queer men, even as she repeatedly challenges, undermines, and flips those tropes. Her complex portrayals of trauma and disability precede and precipitate conversations about those topics in the genre. And her own critical engagement with gender in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992) is frequently reiterated and challenged by authors and readers today.

These collected essays will invite renewed consideration of one of the defining authors of the genre, aimed at new and long-time romance readers, creative writing students, and teachers and scholars of romance. We anticipate that the collection will appeal to both academic and popular audiences.

Interested essayists are invited to contribute essays on single or multiple books within Kinsale’s oeuvre. Topics might include:

• Kinsale’s work in the context of 21st-century romance novels

• War and trauma

• Orientalism

• Gender and gender performance

• Sexuality, particularly representations of queer characters

• Sex, kink, and power

• Disability

• Language use, especially her use of vernaculars, accents, and Middle English

• Genre

At this stage, interested scholars are invited to submit a title, abstract, and brief bio for consideration. Once the book proposal is accepted, final dates for the essay submission (4000-8000 words) will be set. 

Please send materials to Alexandra Vasti at alex@alexandravasti.com by May 31, 2025.

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Decolonising Affective Relationships in Contemporary Romantic Narratives

Special Issue Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses
Editors:
Irene Pérez-Fernandez (University of Oviedo)
and Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez (University of the Balearic Islands)

Popular romance has traditionally been decried as low-quality and escapist genre by conservative canon gatekeepers and feminist scholars alike, scornfully repudiated on account of its allegedly endless recreation of old-fashioned romantic fantasies and harmful gender stereotypes, and generally understood as stubbornly impervious to politics and, as a result, unworthy of academic attention. Despite the complex evolution experienced by the genre in the last few decades and its indisputable popularity, romance fiction continues to be perceived by many as unsuitable for classroom discussion and postcolonial critical thinking. Our aim in this special issue is to reflect on how romance in its multiple print and media forms–, can be a suitable vehicle for postcolonial/decolonial critique.

The deadline is the 30th of March. More details here.

CfP: Love Studies Conference

The International Institute of Love Studies will be holding their second conference:

Dates: March of 14 –16, 2025

Format: The online conference will present pre-recorded talks, followed by the Zoom livestreaming of thematic panel sessions.

Topics of love have become popular across many academic fields, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology, linguistics, literary studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, and other disciplines. The increasing number of studies on love worldwide has gotten to the point where academics and practitioners who are interested in this topic want to have a dedicated platform for the exchange of ideas and research findings and a forum for dialogue and discussion. Therefore, the Conference is going to be truly multidisciplinary and international in its scope.

More details here. And here's the call for proposals:

The International Institute of Love Studies invites researchers and practitioners from various disciplines to submit their proposals for presentations at the Conference on a wide range of love-related topics. The call for proposals is open. The deadline for submitting proposals is January 14, 2025.

More details about how to format and submit a proposal can be found here.

Call for Notes on Preserving Primary Sources

Over on Bluesky, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies just posted:

Last year Jonathan Allan asked "what happens if those primary texts we study are inaccessible to a future researcher? How should the field of popular romance studies begin the process of archiving the primary materials that are studied and talked about?" 

It can be easy to forget how much information can be lost, removed, or withdrawn from distribution. We'd be interested in follow-up notes from people grappling with this issue, on an institutional level (like libraries) or individual level!

And if you're looking for ways to preserve material that might disappear, the information is out there, and some ideas are floating around Bluesky too (for example, this piece from @thetransfemininereview.com).

I thought I'd share the call more widely, as this is such an important issue (and one I'd love to read more about).

"Notes" in JPRS are "Short, with an upper word limit of 1,500 words" (and you can read more about how to submit them here).

Call for Papers: Popular Romance and Sexuality/Erotica

From Jonathan Allan and Catherine Roach:

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the journal Porn Studies focused on 

“Popular Romance and Sexuality/Erotica”

In “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different,” American feminist scholar Ann Barr Snitow laid the groundwork for what has become something of a perpetual debate: is the romance genre pornography? For nearly fifty years, scholars, commentators, authors, publishers, and readers have debated this question, and truth be told, after fifty years, opinions are divided and there is no clear consensus. In particular, some feminist scholars favour the relationship while others dismiss it as pejorative. This Call for Papers is interested not in answering the “is it or isn’t it” question but in thinking creatively about affinities between “porn studies” and “popular romance studies.” What fruitful relationship exists between these two fields of inquiry?

To this end, the Call for Paper seeks new approaches to an old and often antagonistic question. What if instead of comparing romance novels to pornography, the relationship was about the similar ways both genres are scrutinized, dismissed, and controlled? For instance, it is very common for concerns to exist about the potential harms of pornography to the viewer and society. Strikingly, the 1970 Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography includes lengthy discussions of pulp fictions, such as love stories with sexual content alongside the visual medium. The history of American censorship debates can be written alongside the history of popular romance novels. In 1973, Miller v. California appears only months after the first blockbuster romance The Flame and the Flower (1972). During the 1960s, newsstands became sites of potential crime. In 2024, “obscenity” debates have returned in the context of book banning, library wars, and battles over school sex ed curricula. Age verification for pornography is becoming normalized in various jurisdictions. How might these moves affect popular fiction, especially erotic fiction and popular romance? It is not difficult to imagine age verification as a requirement for access to sexually explicit fiction or queer romance—or indeed to texts that challenge heteronormativity, patriarchy, or white Christian nationalism.

 More details can be found here. The closing date is 1 December 2024.

CFPs: IASPR Conference 2025 and Conference of the Popular Culture Association 2025

From the IASPR website, two calls for papers:

Romantic Regions: Call for Papers, IASPR Conference 2025

We are now inviting submissions for the 2025 International Association for the Study of Popular Romance Conference. It will take place from June 24-26 2025 at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, with a Zoom option for people unable to attend in person. We are accepting submissions for papers, panels, or workshops delivered in English or Spanish. 

Our theme for the 2025 IASPR conference is Romantic Regions, thinking through the evolving relationships between romance, place, and space. [...]

Submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words, by November 30, 2024

[More details, including a note for those who "do not have a permanent academic job at a university (eg. PhD students, contingently employed staff, independent scholars), you may be eligible for the Kathleen Seidel Travel Grant" at https://www.iaspr.org/conferences/romantic-regions-call-for-papers-iaspr-conference-2025/ ]

CFP: Romance Area, Conference of the Popular Culture Association (2025)

Romance Area

Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

April 16-19, 2025 – New Orleans, Louisiana

Disrobing the Trope

It does not take an expert to see how important tropes currently are in the marketing of romantic media. Whether we’re talking about friends who find themselves in an only-one-bed situation (and thus become lovers), or enemies forced to fake date (and thus become lovers), or a grump who gets a second chance (to become lovers) with their sunshine-y childhood sweetheart, tropes have become ubiquitous to the way romance narratives are discussed.

In the Romance area of PCA, however, we are experts—and thus, for this year’s conference, we’d like to provoke people to think through and theorize the trope in popular romantic media. [...]

Submit 250-word abstracts to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2024

[More details at https://www.iaspr.org/frontpage/cfp-romance-area-conference-of-the-popular-culture-association-2025/ ]

Call for Papers: Bridgerton and Philosophy

 

Call for Abstracts 

Bridgerton and Philosophy 

Edited by Jessica Miller

The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium. Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. 

Essays may focus on the Netflix series (including Queen Charlotte), the books, or both.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Submission deadline for abstracts (350-500 words) and CVs: August 30, 2024
2. Submission deadline for drafts of accepted papers: January 27, 2025

Kindly submit by e-mail to Jessica Miller: Bridgertonandphilosophy@gmail.com

The final papers should be about 3000 words including notes. More details about possible themes/topics can be found here.