First of all, I'd like to congratulate the 2020 winners of the RWA Academic Research Grant. The
RWA Academic Grant Committee has recommended and the RWA Board of
Directors has approved Dr. Julie E. Moody-Freeman, an Associate
Professor in African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University,
and Hannah E. Scupham, a doctoral student in Literature at the
University of Kansas, as recipients of the 2021 RWA Academic Research
Grant.
and here are more details about the research for which they've received the grants:
‘Lift as We Climb’: Black Romance Writers, Social Justice, and Institution Building, Dr. Julie E. Moody-Freeman
Grant funds will be used to aid in her research that will examine black
writers’ representations of racial uplift in which their romantic plots
and produce one season of the Black Romance Podcast, which
documents the history of the production and publication of Black Romance
through Dr. Moody-Freeman’s conversations with writers, editors,
journalists, and scholars.
Sensual Politics: Modern Romance Novel Reading and Reimagination of the Victorian Past, Hannah E. Scupham
Grant funds will be used to fund dissertation research. Scupham’s work
focuses on how contemporary popular romance novels set in the
nineteenth-century century seek to challenge and change modern readers’
imaginations of the nineteenth-century, specifically on issues of
gender, sexuality, and race.
Here are some recent publications, one of which, by Caroline Duvezin-Caubet, touches on the same area of research as Scupham's, and it's free to read online.
Duvezin-Caubet, Caroline, 2020. "Gaily Ever After: Neo-Victorian M/M Genre Romance for the Twenty-First Century." Neo-Victorian Studies 13.1: 242-269.
Intan, Tania, 2020. "Formula Romance Dalam Perfect Romance Karya Indah Hanaco: Kajian Sastra Feminis."
Alayasastra
16.2: 301-316. [More details here.]
Murias, Rosana, 2021. "In Grey and Pink: The Image of the Bride through the Spanish Postwar Novela Rosa." The Bride in the Cultural Imagination: Screen, Stage, and Literary Productions. Ed. Jo Parnell. Lanham, Maryland:
Lexington Books. 17-34. [More details here.]
