I probably should have posted this list before it got so long, but more and more notifications kept arriving in my inbox and I kept thinking I'd post once I'd added all the news items to the RSDB and that took me longer than anticipated. Anyway, I'll begin with a couple of not-strictly academic pieces which are, nonetheless, quite academic:
In the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (June 8) Guy Lancaster (mentioned recently on this blog and who has a publication below) gives his backstory as a non-romance reader before exploring the societal implications of the denigration of romance:
For so long, we have regarded the consumption of Harlequin paperbacks as
nigh pathological on the part of women, when in fact, it was the
rejection of romance that typified the pathological condition beginning
to emerge in American culture at large. After all, these stories center
the phenomenon we call love. And as no less a thinker than G.W.F. Hegel,
perhaps the greatest philosopher of the 19th century, wrote in
"Elements of the Philosophy of Right" (1820): "Love means in general the
consciousness of my unity with another, so that I am not isolated on my
own, but gain my self-consciousness only through the renunciation of my
independent existence and through knowing myself as the unity of myself
with another and of the other with me." (https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/jun/08/the-thrill-of-love/, archived here and also here)
And that's not entirely unrelated to Jessica Taylor's ponderings about the value of her research into romance now that she's outside academia, and how success is measured (in publishing and academia): "What is writing a romance for? What is this essay for? Is work all there is?" Jessica's PhD thesis, Write the Book of Your Heart: Career, Passion and Publishing in the Romance Writing Community (2013) can be downloaded here.
And the latest additions to the Romance Scholarship Database:
Ahmed, Iman and Michael-Zane Brose, Lara Dengs, Lucie Elfering, Elena
John, Mira Kalcker, Alice Kronenberg, Charmaine Küllenberg, Laura Le
Donne, Alican Nazik, Lena Neisen, Öznur Zeynep Özdal, Hanna
Schneemann, Antonia Steven, Julie Bøglund Strand (2025). A “Messy Complexity”? On Coming-Out, Identity Formation, and Community in Queer YA Romance Novels. Heinrich
Heine University Duesseldorf.
Burkes, Jordan (2025). The Love Hypothesis: Exploring the Consumption of Romance Novels.PhD,
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. [Embargoed until 2032 but the abstract can be found here.]
Hodson,
Jane (2024). "The Significance of Stance in Fictional
Representations of Non-Standard Language and Prescriptivism".
New
Horizons in Prescriptivism Research,
edited by Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, María E. Rodríguez-Gil and Javier
Pérez-Guerra. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters:
103-119. [https://doi.org/10.21832/9781800416154-007 I was late in finding this, probably because it doesn't mention romance in the title or the text of the essay. It does, though, focus on the use of "non-standard" language in Georgette Heyer's The Unknown Ajax. Currently, most/all of this is visible via Google Books.]
Kamblé, Jayashree (2025). "The
Women Who Changed the American Mass-Market Romance Genre: BIPOC
Editors, Authors, and Category Romance Novels from 1980 to 1988."Contemporary Women's Writing
19. [Abstract available here and excerpts here.]
Lancaster, Guy (2025).
" ‘It had turned them all into voyeurs’: Celebrity as the Antithesis of Community in Molly O’Keefe’s Wild Child."Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies
56.1:25–36. [Details here.]
Raffloer, Gavin and Melanie Green (2025).
"Of Love & Lasers: Perceptions of Narratives by AI Versus Human Authors."
Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans. [This is Online First, so does not yet have pagination. Also note that the paper discusses romance generated by AI versus romance written by humans, and I've written some comments on the methodology from the perspective of a romance scholar.]
Sutton, Denise H. (2025).
“Romance Publishing for a New Generation: The Case of Harlequin and
Mills & Boon In India.” Publishing History 89:7-27. [More details in the RSDB]
Valovirta, Elina (2025). "Romancing the Caribbean Sea: Size, Mobility and Sustainability in Cruise Ship Romance Fiction". Anglia 143.2: 382-397. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2025-0026
Wilder, Mims (2025). (Wo)Men in Love: An Analysis of Sexual
Scripts, Escapism, and Queer Explorations Among Woman Readers and
Authors of Male/Male Romance Novels. Doctor of Philosophy in
Human Sexuality, California Institute of Integral Studies.
[More details here.]
The final additions to issue 9 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies have now gone online and are (as always) freely available to read, both on the website and in downloadable pdf.
"A Cosmopolitan National Romance: A Study of In Dependence by Sarah Ladipo Manyika." MA thesis, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Pdf available. [About an African novel which it seems might or might not be a romance,
depending on how one defines "African romance" (since the author argues
that African romance is more expansive than the US definition).]
González Cruz, Maria Isabel, 2017.
'Exploring the dynamics of English/Spanish codeswitching in a written corpus', Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 30: 331-355. Abstract and link to pdf
Lessard, Victoria, 2017.
'Marketing Desire: The "Normative/Other" Male Body and the "Pure" White Female Body on the Cover Art of Cassie Edwards' Savage Dream (1990), Savage Persuasion (1991), and Savage Mists (1992)', MA thesis, McGill University. Pdf available
Neville, Lucy, 2018.
Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Excerpt
Pérez Casal, Inmaculada, 2016.
“Love in Times of Crisis: An Approach to Contemporary Romance Novels in Spain.” Journal of Artistic Creation and Literary Research 4.2: 62-70. Pdf available
Pérez Casal, Inmaculada, 2018.
“Mass-market romance and the question of genre: N. Sparks, E. L. James and D. Gabaldon.” Oceánide 10. Pdf available
Rudisill, Kristen, 2018.
“Full-Blooded Desi Romance: Contemporary English-Language Romance Novels in India.” Journal of Popular Culture. Online First. Excerpt
Taylor, Jessica, 2018.
'Animating Creative Selves: Pen Names as Property in the Careers of Canadian and American Romance Writers', American Ethnologist 45.1: 112-123. Abstract
[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.
Recently Vassiliki Veros was a member of a reader’s panel at the Australian Library and Information Association's 2012 conference and she's posted her paper at her blog. She's a librarian, but
As a reader, I gave up on accessing my books from my library early on.
I bought all my romances from newsagencies, supermarkets, second hand
bookstores, bookshops, markets, online and swapping books with friends.
As a romance reader I am not unique in this behaviour.
This is because
Libraries have treated romance readers as “the devil” for they maintain a
distance from them. We see this in librarians trying to improve
the readers choice, cataloguers not valuing the books the readers
choose. All this is reflected in the romance readers survey responses
that the library is not a provider for their reading needs.
Why can’t we love the undead? So many friends push aside the idea of a
zombie lover completely (you guys can’t judge me! You read about vampire
sex!) [...]
As discussed before [see this post], zombie romance is more romance. Sex never enters the equation. It’s about a relationship of souls (personalities), a coming together of two people.
But still zombies aren’t good enough! The rotting is either done away with completely or can be avoided with medication. The eating of people or brains is the same. So where is the problem? They are undead humans, as are vampires. With rational thought, being capable of emotions, moral agency and free will, why are the undead any less suitable as mates?
The top shelf of my largest bookshelf is stacked two rows
deep with romances with titles like One
Night with the Sheikh by Penny Jordan and Desert Barbarian by Charlotte Lamb. These books (and a corresponding set of binders full of photocopies from 1920s movie magazines) are the remnants of a
research project on romantic Orientalism in the United States in the 1920s and
2000s which is currently on hiatus. [...] But now the blogosphere is in luck. This summer I’ve decided to set myself a lofty task:
Read and review all of my sheikh romances and post the reviews on this very blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. On Wednesdays I’ll post a scan from one of the many articles about how hot Rudolph Valentino is. Is this an overly optimistic schedule for someone who’s also finishing her thesis? I guess we’ll see…
And you can read all about it here. She begins with an extended synopsis of/commentary on E. M. Hull's The Sheik (1), (2), (3) and (4).
Fifty Shades of Grey does an interesting dance with the explicit. It revels in the details of the taboo of BDSM while seeming to condemn it. [...] And many, many readers love this. They can masturbate furiously to the
scenes played out in the Red Room of Pain, while waiting for the heroine
to cure Mr. Grey of his perversions.
I am reminded of the masses who enjoyed the spectacle of the Salem
Witch Trials or denunciations of heretics during the Spanish
Inquisition.
"She consorted lewdly with the Devil!" the inquisitor proclaims, partly
for the judges but loudly enough to entertain the masses. He lovingly
details the proof of her perfidy. The women gasp and feel a quiver
between their thighs right before they all scream, "Burn the witch!" [...]
I don't think a large portion of mainstream society has evolved much
since then. And for erotica writers, who usually situate themselves
firmly in the sex-positive camp, this is very hard to comprehend. We
write novels about how erotic experience and the exploration of new
sexual territories helps us grow as individuals. For us, sex in a
doorway. Very often our themes are about revelation, completion,
redemption through experience. Not through shame or rejection or closing
down our sexual options.
The photo of "Zombie and Bride of the Zombie" came from Wikimedia Commons and was taken by Sam Pullara, who has made it available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Laura Vivanco recently posted on the differences between the UK and Australian covers of Maisey Yate’s The Highest Price to Pay, suggesting that it is the first Mills & Boon ‘Modern Romance’ title to feature a black protagonist on the cover. Of course, while not of African-Caribbean descent, non-white heroes have long been depicted on ‘Modern Romance’ covers in the figure of the sheikh. Yet the racial politics of sheikh romance covers are not straightforward either. The erotic fetishising of contrasting skin colour is a well-documented trope in both modern and older sheikh romances and is commonly used in ‘Modern Romance’ titles:
The dark bronze of his body was in contrast to her own paler skin and as he lay down beside her she was fascinated by the sight of his large long-fingered hand splaying possessively across her body. Who’d have thought anything so simple could be so erotic? (West, For the Sheikh's Pleasure, 104)
Jessica Taylor has written that sheikh romances are one of the few occasions when the colour line is broken in North American category romance (1036). Hsu-Ming Teo observed that the covers of sheikh romances in the 1990s (so before the start of the Mills & Boon ‘Modern Romance’ series in August 2000) emphasised and celebrated racial difference as symbolised through skin tone (250), which seems to correlate with the eroticisation of contrasting skin colour in sheikh romances. Teo’s observations are initially corroborated by Juliet Flesch’s findings that the covers of sheikh romances published in the late 1980s and early 1990s emphasise a contrast between a blonde heroine and a dark hero.
However, Flesch goes on to observe that the covers of later sheikh novels published in the 1990s by the same author reveal less contrast between hero and heroine (214-215). Whilst both Teo and Flesch research novels published in the 1990s, my analysis of novels published from 2000-2009 reveals a surprising shift which correlates with Flesch’s conclusions about later sheikh novels. On the covers of some sheikh titles published in Mills & Boon’s ‘Modern Romance’ series over the past ten years, sheikh heroes have been whitened and a suggestive contrast has arisen between the representation of heroes in the text, where contrasting skin colour is eroticised, and the covers, where the contrast in skin colour is reduced and, in some cases, completely elided. Of the 57 sheikh romances published in the ‘Modern Romance’ series, only six appear to emphasise a contrast in skin colour on the cover (see for example The Desert Sheikh's Captive Wife and Traded to the Sheikh). The six novels which emphasise racial difference seem to be clustered in the two-year period from 2006-2008: Emma Darcy’s Traded to the Sheikh (2006); Sandra Marton’s The Desert Virgin (2006); Jane Porter’s The Sheikh’s Disobedient Bride (2006); Sharon Kendrick’s The Sheikh’s English Bride (2007); Lynne Graham’s The Desert Sheikh’s Captive Wife (2007); and The Sheikh’s Convenient Virgin by Trish Morey (2008).
Eighteen covers remove the couple from the cover all together, substituting a desert landscape, which seemed to be the preferred format until around 2005 (see The Arabian Mistress);
24 covers feature a couple who have no evident skin colour contrast (see Desert Prince, Defiant VirginandThe Sheikh's Ransomed Bride);
and nine covers have a slight, discernable difference, but which is not the main focus of the cover (see The Sheikh's Unwilling Wife).
Many of the covers are unique to sheikh romances published in the UK; although the same titles are published in North America and Australia, it is only since Miranda Lee's Love-Slave to the Sheikh (2006) that the UK covers have used the same images as the North American 'Harlequin Presents...' and the Australian 'Sexy' covers.
There seems to be no correlation between the skin colour of the sheikh hero on the cover and in the text. For example, Annie West's The Sheikh’s Ransomed Bride describes how the heroine’s ‘breath stopped at the sight of him there, one large, tanned hand on her pale skin’ (147), yet the cover indicates no difference in skin colour between hero and heroine. In the text, their contrasting skin colour is eroticised, but on the covers, the sheikh’s ability to assimilate into (white) western culture is more prominent. This seems to reveal a paradox within these romances: a desire for difference, but an insistence on sameness.
This paradox is of course reflected in the sheikh hero’s hybridity, he has often been educated in the West, and may have Western (European, North American or Australian) parentage. Marketing a romance novel with a Middle Eastern hero at a time of political instability and western military engagement in the Middle East and North Africa could be seen as risky, therefore Mills & Boon may be attempting to solve this by emphasising the hero’s hybridity on the cover. Yet if the whitening of sheikh heroes on the covers is reflective of this hybridity, it seems odd that this would not be the case in the novels themselves, where the contrast in skin colour between the hero and heroine is regularly highlighted.
Perhaps what these covers indicate is that ‘sheikh-ness’ doesn’t necessarily have to come from the skin colour of the hero but can be indicated in other ways. For example, on the cover of The Sheikh’s Ransomed Bride the display of fabric, wood carving on the bed frame, a stone archway and a pool are Orientalist markers which signify the ethnic identity of the sheikh as well as his geographical locus in the east. The cover of The Sheikh's Unwilling Wife is similarly clear in its use of markers of ethnicity, displaying stone arches behind the hero and heroine, and tokenistic Orientalist markers in the candle, pouring jug, vase and basket. These serve to indicate that although his skin seems to be white, the hero on the cover is still a sheikh. This may also be achieved by the novels’ title; ‘Modern Romance’ sheikh novels are the only subgenre which always indicate that the hero’s identity by using the words ‘sheikh’ (e.g. Sandra Marton’s The Sheikh’s Wayward Wife (2008)), ‘Sultan’ (The Sultan’s Virgin Bride by Sarah Morgan (2006)), ‘Desert’ (Annie West’s The Desert King’s Pregnant Wife (2008)) or Arabian (The Arabian Love-Child by Michelle Reid (2002)). So it is racial, not ethnic difference which is removed in the whitening of the sheikh hero, which begs the question: if it is not skin colour, what makes a sheikh?
---------
Emma Darcy, Traded to the Sheikh (Richmond: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2006).
Juliet Flesch, From Australia with Love: a History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels (Fremantle: Curtin University Books, 2004).
Lynne Graham, The Arabian Mistress (Richmond: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2001).
Jessica Taylor, ‘And You Can Be My Sheikh: Gender, Race, and Orientalism in Contemporary Romance Novels’, Journal of Popular Culture 40.6 (2007), pp. 1032-1051.
Hsu-Ming Teo, ‘Orientalism and Mass Market Romance Novels in the Twentieth Century’, Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual, ed. Ned Curthoys and Debjani Ganguly (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 241-262.
2009 marked the ninetieth anniversary of the publication of The Sheik. As is well-known, the publication of the novel and the release of the film starring Rudolph Valentino in the eponymous role unleashed “sheik fever” in the western world. [...] The word “sheik,” originally a term of respect referring to a Muslim religious leader or an elder of a community or family, suddenly took on new connotations of irresistible, ruthless, masterful, and over‐sexualized masculinity in the West—before ending up as a brand of condoms in America by 1931.
But as the sheik was transformed into a sexual fantasy for Western women, his female counterpart seemed to have been pushed aside. Sheikh romances generally depict the relationship "between an Arabian sheik or prince and a white Western (usually British or American) woman" (Taylor). Jessica Taylor adds that "the only position for an Arabian woman available in Orientalist discourse seemed to be that of harem occupant, a passive role which is unsuitable for the heroine of the novel, especially since it is a racialized role and the heroines are only ever racialized as ‘white’." Arab women may appear in these novels, but they generally do so as secondary characters. Although they may be given only limited opportunities to speak for themselves, they are not infrequently mentioned by the white heroines, for as Evelyn Bach notes,
In the verbal battles that constitute much of the courtship in this genre, the heroine often makes pointed references to such traditions as white slavery, huge harems, unbridled lust, imprisonment, the inequality of women and the arrogant despotism of Eastern potentates in general and her abductor in particular. (22)
In addition,
In a number of desert romances, usually quite early in the narrative, the heroine makes pointed comparisons between herself and native women. The observations range from the miserable, restricted lives they lead to their constant sexual availability and unquestioning subservience to the men who are their lords and masters. These comparisons serve a number of purposes. First, they add to the litany of Eastern injustice and barbarity. Second, they enable the heroine to maintain her privileged position as a special, exceptional woman. Constant reminders throughout the texts of her fair or auburn hair and pale skin ensure that her difference is more than adequately established. (22-23)
Although some more recent novels do depict more feisty "native women" as secondary characters, Bach's observations probably still hold true about many others, and that's a shame because it obscures the reality of Muslim women's lives and personalities, for example
Young Egyptian women are using blogs and online radio stations to beat the censors and to fight for equality.
Despite making up only 24% of the workforce in Egypt, 30% of women use the internet.
But it is the middle and upper classes that have really taken to the internet as an alternative way to discuss topics and exchange information and air what many conservatives would consider to be radical views.
Women have been extremely politically active in the country for quite some time now, and many Iranians are amused, quite frankly, at the West's sudden revelation that neither chadors nor head scarves snuff out the fire in women's bellies. "This isn't new. This is only the first time that you've been aware of it," Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, tells me with a good-natured laugh. Women were essential political organizers as far back as the 1905 Constitutional Revolution; they also fought and died alongside men in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which might not have happened without their help.
Since then, women have rebelled in deceptively superficial ways. Post-revolution, many began pushing the bounds of the new Islamic state's moral fabric, both literally and figuratively. The small silk scarves, bright nail polish and dramatic makeup that have become emblematic of the protests are a direct challenge to the official dress code. "It was the way for women to protest since the '80s," says Marina Nemat, author of "Prisoner of Tehran," a personal memoir about being imprisoned, tortured and nearly executed in Iran.
Last year I came across an article in The Observer which begins with these words: "Habitually dressed in a long black abaya, with a veil placed firmly against her cheek, Shaikha Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, the wife of the king of Bahrain, does not conform to the usual image of a political activist." She doesn't conform to the usual image of the sheikh's wife that's to be found at the end of sheikh romances either: "Mild-mannered, progressive and with an impressive command of English, the 60-year-old royal, [is] the first of King Hamad's four wives."
In Qatar Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned is the second of the three wives of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar (Wikipedia) and she
plays a highly visible role in a region where royal wives until recently were rarely seen and certainly never heard.
While it is a deeply conservative society, Qatari women can vote, drive and play a full part in the workplace: headscarves are a frequent sight, but the dress code for women is not as strict as in Saudi. Dr Sheikha Abdulla al-Misnad, president of Qatar University, says about half her staff and 70% of her students are women. (Sutherland)
Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned
currently serves as Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a private non-profit organization founded in 1995 on the personal initiative of His Highness the Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani. In autumn 2003, Qatar Foundation inaugurated Education City, a prototypical campus of the future, bringing branches of renowned international universities to Qatar to provide top class degree programs and to share research and community-based ventures.
In addition to her work at Qatar Foundation, Her Highness has long served as President of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs which aims to strengthen the role of the family in society and addresses issues of concern to women and children. Her Highness serves as well as Vice Chairperson of both the Supreme Education Council and the Supreme Health Council. In addition, she is Chairperson of the Sidra Medical and Research Center project to build a premier academic medical center in Qatar, Chairperson of the Silatech initiative to address the growing challenge of youth employment in the Middle East and North Africa region, and Chairperson of the Doha-based Arab Democracy Foundation.
Her Highness plays an important role on the international stage as well. In 2003, UNESCO appointed her Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education. In this capacity she actively promotes various international projects to improve the quality and accessibility of education worldwide. In June 2003, she established the International Fund for Higher Education in Iraq which is dedicated to the reconstruction of institutions of advanced learning. In 2005, she was selected by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to be a Member of the High Level Group of the UN Alliance of Civilizations. (from her own website)
In sheikh romances the personal is also quite clearly the political. As Amira Jarmakani has noted,
despite claims from romance readers and writers that these novels bear no relation to the actual Middle East, the threatening specter of the terrorist is very much present in these stories, many of which fixate on the sheikh’s efforts to modernize his country against the wishes of those characters presented as primitive and barbaric. (998)
In addition, the hero often grants some of his immense political power to the heroine:
By and large, most of the Arab countries described in these books are fictional. Sometimes these lands are socially repressive, but their leaders usually strive to change them into more modern societies that treat women equally. In some cases, the skills or talent of the beautiful heroine often may help this effort along, particularly if she entered the country for the purpose of taking a temporary professional position (i.e. hospital administrator, conference planner, headhunter). (Sheiks and Desert Love website)
Or, as Jarmakani puts it,
the iteration of global feminism proffered by the novels defines the white heroine’s freedom in opposition to her Arab female counterpart, thereby using an individualist model that implicitly excludes the racialized other from participating in the same freedoms. (999)
Thus, despite the inevitable exceptions, there would appear to be a pattern, common in this subgenre, of feisty, liberated Western heroines nobly working to emancipate oppressed Arab women.1 This is problematic for reasons outlined by Nouha al-Hegelan in an article written in 1980 and titled "Women in the Arab World":
As a result of Western misinformation and lack of awareness, Arab women are unfortunately, victims of the stereotyping process. There is little understanding of either our status as women or the total context of our lives. Like other maligned groups, we do our best to understand these misperceptions and, in our own way, to confront them. I know of no Arab woman who underestimates the difficulty of changing Western assumptions. The stereotypes of Arab women, "imprisoned behind a veil of powerlessness," will not be eradicated in our lifetime. While we are often shocked into numbness by the depth of the misunderstanding, we know that each epoch of awareness is a new beginning and a new opportunity for us and for our daughters.
Just such a shock lies in what I call the "born yesterday assumption". Westerners begin by comparing the Arab/ Moslem woman to her sisters in the West. Using Western women as a standard is only part of the insult. The injury is magnified by the added assumption that the Arab woman began her struggle yesterday-as if she was somehow born whole out of a newly tapped oil well-a veiled, uncivilized non-entity.
Like most stereotypes, this image is not merely wrong or insulting, it is ludicrous. Long before Western women even considered themselves as a group, let alone a group deprived of its rights, the Islamic woman had begun her emancipation. From the beginning of Islam, 1400 years ago, the Moslem woman was born with all the rights -cultural and spiritual - due a human being.
Part of that history includes the fact that "one of the world's first universities was founded by a Muslim woman, Fatima al-Fihri." For her part, Shaikha Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, who"has forged ahead with critical reforms in her position as head of the newly-established Supreme Council for Women" says that "The image of Arab women in the west, that we are just princesses in a golden cage, with no rights, no choice, no brains and no education, is a challenge. It's totally wrong and I really want to correct it."
So have you come across any sheikh romances which correct the misperceptions of Arab women? Do you think this sub-genre has changed in recent years so that, as suggested by Emily Haddad, "where the novels that appeared before 2004 typically wallowed in the exoticism of their orientalized settings, the newer novels often minimize or even eliminate the Arab world as a setting, or diminish cross-cultural conflict by ascribing a Middle Eastern identity to the heroine" (60)? -------
1 Among the exceptions are the heroine of Susan Mallery's The Sheik and the Runaway Princess, a "half-Bahanian, half-American princess and art specialist [...] Bahania is a fictional country on the Arabian peninsula" (Haddad 47), the heroine of Jane Porter's The Sheikh's Virgin, "Keira Gordon [who] was born Keira al-Issidri, and the narrative returns obsessively to her confusion over her half-English, half Barakan heritage" (Haddad 58), the half American Aliyah in Olivia Gates's The Desert King and the heroines of two novels written by Alexandra Sellers, namely "Jalia, the heroine of The Ice Maiden's Sheikh [who] is a Bagestani princess raised in exile in England" (Haddad 57) and "The heroine of The Fierce and Tender Sheikh [who] is another princess, Shakira, who had been lost following the assassination of her parents, and is at the beginning of the book living as a boy in a refugee camp" (Haddad 57).
al-Hegelan, Nouha. "Women in the Arab World." First published in Arab Perspectives 1.7 (October 1980). Republished online by Cornell University.
Haddad, Emily A. “Bound to Love: Captivity in Harlequin Sheikh Novels.” Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. Ed. Sally Goade. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007. 42-64.
Jarmakani, Amira. " 'The Sheik Who Loved Me': Romancing the War on Terror." Signs 35.4 (2010): 993-1017.
Taylor, Jessica. "'And you can be my Sheikh': Gender, Race, and Orientalism in Contemporary Romance Novels", an online essay published in 2003. [I have quoted from this version of the essay because it is available online, which makes it easy for all readers of this blog to access it. It should be noted, however, that an updated version of the essay has now been published in the Journal of Popular Culture as “And You Can Be My Sheikh: Gender, Race, and Orientalism in Contemporary Romance Novels.” Journal of Popular Culture 40.6 (2007): 1032-1051.]
Teo, Hsu-Ming. "Historicizing The Sheik: Comparisons of the British Novel and the American Film." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1 (2010). [Teo has written at slightly greater length about modern sheikh romances in "Orientalism and Mass Market Romance Novels in the Twentieth Century," in Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual, ed. Ned Curthoys and Debjani Ganguly (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 241-262, excerpts of which are available via Google Books.]
The first photo, of Shaikha Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, came from Women Gateway. If you scroll down this page you should reach a short biography of her in English. I've also included a photo (found via Wikipedia) of Queen Rania of Jordan, speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos in 2007. I have included these photos because they provide evidence of some of the real women whose fictional counterparts are so often relegated to the status of secondary characters in sheikh romances, while their roles are usurped by Western heroines.
