Upcoming Exhibition on Romance

From Patch:

McDaniel College hosts “Romancing the Novel,” a major exhibition exploring romance novels and their cultural impact.

Featuring original cover art, including paintings by James Griffin, Frank Kalan, and Gregg Gulbronson, manuscripts, publicity materials, genre history, and fan artwork, “Romancing the Novel” is curated by Robert Lemieux, associate professor of communication and cinema at McDaniel. The exhibition is in association with McDaniel’s Nora Roberts American Romance Collection, Bowling Green State University’s Browne Popular Culture Library, renowned romance publisher, Harlequin, and Yale University Art Gallery (Roy Lichtenstein’s “Crying Girl” is on loan courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery.)

Free and open to the public, “Romancing the Novel” runs Monday, Jan. 6-Friday, March 7, in McDaniel’s Esther Prangley Rice Gallery, Peterson Hall, at 2 College Hill, Westminster, Maryland. A public reception takes place Thursday, Feb. 6, 5:30-7:30 p.m., with a gallery talk at 6 p.m., and a “Romancing the Novel” speaker series is planned in collaboration with Carroll County Public Library to further highlight the romance genre during the month of February. As part of this series, historian Nicole Jackson, a professor at Bowling Green State University and co-host of the “Black Romance Has A History” podcast, presents "Love in Liberty: Black Historical Romances and the Joy of Freedom,” on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 6 p.m., in Coley Rice Lounge, McDaniel Hall, at McDaniel College (2 College Hill, Westminster, Maryland) with details about additional events forthcoming.

[Updated to add: these details can also be found on McDaniel's website at https://www.mcdaniel.edu/news/major-exhibition-opening-2025-explores-romance-novels-and-their-cultural-impact ]

Online Romance Writing Program from McDaniel College

Posted on behalf of Professor Pamela Regis

McDaniel College is pleased to offer our Romance Writing Certificate program again this year. Professor Jennifer Crusie, MFA (Bet Me, Welcome to Temptation, etc.) teaches the program. Below is her description of it. Head over to ArghInk if you’d like to ask questions. Or email me, pregis AT mcdaniel DOT edu. I’m the go-to person for administrative help. Here’s Jenny: 

The 2013 McDaniel College Nora Roberts Romance Writing Program begins on August 12, and registration is open now. We’ve made a lot of changes since our first year, and a big thank you to the 2012 McD students who helped me figure out a better way to teach this, to Pam Regis who is the perfect administrator (patience of a saint), and to Nora Roberts, whose generosity makes this program possible. 
 

Here are some details about the program:

• The course is “wholly online, completely asynchronous,” which means you’ll never have to leave the house, and there is no set time you have to be online, although you do have to check in regularly.
• There are five eight-week classes in the program with two-week breaks in between each course. We’ve also added three optional eight-week workshops for a second year because of student interest.
• The first four courses are designed to give students the tools they need to make their novels better. Please note, that’s “tools” not “rules” and “better” not “conforming to a standard of perfection.” Each course gives the student the theory behind the subject of the course, the writing tools that have developed from the theories, and practice in using those tools.
• The fifth course is on publishing. We drink a lot during that one.
• The three second-year workshops are designed to provide the student with a framework and support group for finishing her novel.

Each course is divided into four two-week modules.

The assignments for each first year module are:

• an exercise or analysis to make the module concept clearer (Mod 1)
• a scene or synopsis or query letter (aka creative writing) (Mod 2)
• three critiques of fellow students’ work plus an exercise or analysis to make a concept clearer (Mod 3)
• the rewrite of the creative writing assignment from [Mod 2]; the publishing course adds a completed book proposal

The assignments for second year workshop modules are:

• an overview of the novel (plot plan, character arc plan, novel plan (Mod 1)
• a student-designed project based on a problem in the student’s novel (Mod 2 & 3)
• one third of the student’s novel finished in draft form (Mod 4)

In addition to the formal assignments, students are required to:

• Participate in the discussion forums (this has not been a problem for the 2012 students; the problem has been getting them out of the forums; turns out writers like to talk about writing)
• Write their goals for each module in online Learning Logs and then evaluate those goals at the end of the modules (along with any notes, insights, questions, etc., during the module; your online journal).
• Write ten pages/ 2500 words of new first draft on their novels each module (this is evaluated solely on quantity, not quality; the idea is to keep students writing new pages for their novels while they’re analyzing and rewriting their work in assignments).
• Read a lot throughout the first four classes: romance novels, writing textbooks (Robert McKee’s Story, Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction, Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers), internet posts and essays, and the Lecture PDFs I put up each module. There are also some videos to watch and some screenplays to read which usually leads to watching the films (Moonstruck and “A Scandal in Belgravia” in particular).

Other things you should know:

• Everything students do in this program is part of a process; none of these assignments is supposed to be finished work. You can’t fix a page until you HAVE a page, and since writing is re-writing (and re-writing and re-writing), it’s important not to waste time and energy worrying about how perfect the assignment is and focus instead on how to make it better each time. Because writers tend to despair when they look at their drafts, and despair is only amplified if somebody’s actually grading the suckers, I repeated, “It’s a process, just make it better each time” as a reminder so many times that the students voted to put “It’s a process” on the McD 2012 t-shirt.
• I am always, always, always late with the grading, but if a student asks a question on the Discussion boards or on the class blog, she’ll get a (probably long and detailed) answer within twenty-four hours. After five courses, I’m convinced that the real learning in this program takes place in the Discussion Forums and the group blog, but I’m going to make the students do the assignments anyway.
• I will answer questions about the program in the comments, but I’ve also invited the current students to come over and answer questions, too, since they’ll have a better perspective on the experience. I’ve told them to be brutally honest in their answers, but if you’d prefer, Jill at jillwquestions@gmail.com, Michille at michillecaples@comcast.net, Kathy at kate.deane@hotmail.com, and Jeannine at jec003@connections.mcdaniel.edu will also answer questions privately in e-mail.

Admin stuff:

Tuition is $450 per credit hour; courses are three credit hours. Registration is open now until July 31. The class is limited to fifteen students, and when it’s filled, that’s it because I am not effective with class sizes larger than that. The next opportunity to begin the program will be August 2014, although I don’t know if I’ll still be teaching the classes next year. Click here to apply: http://www.mcdaniel.edu/graduate/admissions/

Study Popular Romance Fiction Online

Laura Vivanco

Professor Pamela Regis would like to announce that McDaniel College is offering a 4-credit, undergraduate (sophomore/junior level) literature course on

Popular Romance Fiction

Where: It’s online. Anyone with an internet connection can take this course.

When: July 8 through August 9, 2013 but the course is asynchronous. In other words, you sign onto the course when your schedule permits. You will never be required to be in front of your computer at any set time in order to attend class. You attend class on your schedule, because the course is available on the College’s Blackboard server 24/7.

Instructor: Dr. Kathleen Miller, specialist in nineteenth-century British lit, the gothic, disability studies, and romance fiction.

Course description: Popular Romance Fiction will be an investigation of the most popular form of fiction in the western world: the romance novel. Readings begin with the advent of the modern form of the romance novel in England in 1740, but are drawn mostly from the nineteenth-through-twenty-first century romance novel. We will be reading the following romances:

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Boomerang Bride, Fiona Lowe
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Jane, April Linder
Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick

Students will explore the popularity of romance fiction, and consider its depiction of courtship and sexuality through a variety of critical approaches including formalist, feminist, and gender studies. Assignments will include regular contributions to the course’s discussion board, an active presence on social media related to the romance writer/reader community, short writing assignments, an argumentative essay, and a web portfolio.

To register: Drop Pam Regis an email pregis@mcdaniel.edu and she will email you the brief enrollment form and instructions. You do not have to be admitted to McDaniel College through our regular admissions process in order to take this course.

Cost: ENG 2272-OL Popular Romance Fiction, 4 credits: $1570. Auditing the course: $785.

Enrollment deadline: July 1, 2013.

Update: Non-Credit Option for McDaniel Romance Writing Courses

Pamela Regis

This additional path to these courses was created, in part, in answer to a number of inquires from international students who were finding the credentials authentication process lengthy and cumbersome, and who did not really care if they got credit.  They just wanted to take the courses. 

Here's the update:

********************

We've added a non-credit option for the McDaniel College romance writing courses which begin on August 27. 

From the McDaniel website:

Not interested in receiving graduate credit?
A noncredit version of the program is available for those not wishing to pursue graduate credit.  The noncredit version of the program offers students the exact same program, experience and interaction as the credit version of the program.  Download the noncredit registration form.  Please carefully follow the instructions on the form regarding registration and payment for the noncredit option. Noncredit registration forms can be e-mailed to Ms. Penny Pfeiffer at ppfeiffer@mcdaniel.edu or faxed to 410-857-2515 (attn:  Penny Pfeiffer).

To enroll as a non-credit student you do not need a bachelor's degree, and international students interested in the program do not need to undertake the authentication of their credentials required of degree-seeking, for-credit students.  

The courses are online and asynchronous--you can attend class at any time, 24/7, from anyplace in the world that has an internet connection. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie will be teaching the writing courses. She and I will co-teach the first course, Reading the Romance, a craft-driven analysis of the writing technique in ten novels, designed to sharpen your tools for the work in the writing courses that follow.  

Full information here.

I welcome questions about the registration process or about the courses themselves.

Online Romance Writing Courses from McDaniel College

Pamela Regis

McDaniel College is fielding a new five-course sequence in Romance Writing, to begin this fall. Each course lasts eight weeks, and is online, asynchronous (anyone, anywhere with an internet connection can do course work at any time), focused on romance writing, and taught by Jennifer Cruise, MFA, New York Times best selling author. The program is the first of its kind.

These graduate-level courses are for new and experienced writers who have a bachelor’s degree.

The five courses lead students through an examination of the craft of romance writing—with a focus on character as it informs and builds story. Students develop a proposal—a synopsis, 30 polished pages, and a query letter—for an original, novel-length romance.

The first course, Reading the Romance (3 credit hours), guides you through an analysis of the craft elements in novels by respected romance writers:

Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Heaven, Texas. 1995.
Nora Roberts. Montana Sky. 1996.
Loretta Chase. Lord of Scoundrels. 1995.
Beverly Jenkins. Indigo. 1996.
Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich. Dogs and Goddesses. 2009.
Melissa Marr. Wicked Lovely. 2007.
Patricia Gaffney. The Saving Graces. 1999.
Barbara O’Neal. How to Bake a Perfect Life. 2010.

Your guides to craft will be Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer, and Robert McKee, Story, as well as Jennifer Crusie and/or Pam Regis, who will occasionally teach the first course.

It begins on August 27. Register beginning July 1 but before July 28.

In the next four courses (each 3 credits), Jennifer Crusie provides one-on-one feedback:

In…	…you will focus on writing
Writing the Romance Novel I	character
Writing the Romance Novel II	structure
Romance Writing Workshop	revision
Publishing	the proposal package

Development costs were funded by a generous gift by the Nora Roberts Foundation.

Credit hours transfer into a McDaniel Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) degree. Cost: $1,290 per course.

Learn more details

For those of you who have heard of Jennifer Crusie's involvement with The Writewell Academy and are wondering if there's a difference between the courses on offer there and at McDaniel College, we explain the Writewell/McDaniel relationship in this way:

Although the information from Writewell will be part of the McDaniel program, it will not be in the same form. Writewell is baseline level introduction to creative writing, consisting of just the lectures and support materials. Writewell's creators don't read anybody's work for Writewell. McDaniel's program is a full blown, hands on creative writing program, workshops, critiques, etc. Professor Crusie does read and offer critique. She says, "It's the difference between a really good bicycle and a Mercedes."

McDaniel College Receives $100,000 Grant from Nora Roberts Foundation

Laura Vivanco

I've just received the following press release:

Office of Communications and Marketing

2 College Hill
Westminster, MD 21157-4390

Contact: Cheryl Knauer

410-857-2294

cknauer@mcdaniel.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

February 7, 2012

McDANIEL COLLEGE RECEIVES $100,000 GRANT FROM NORA ROBERTS FOUNDATION

Grant to Help Advance Research and Study of Romance Literature

Second consecutive year that McDaniel has received funding from Nora Roberts, a best-selling author of more than 200 romance novels

WESTMINSTER, Md. – McDaniel College has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Nora Roberts Foundation to help advance research and study of romance literature.

This is the second consecutive year that the college has received funding from Nora Roberts, a best-selling author of more than 200 romance novels.

The grant from the Nora Roberts Foundation supports McDaniel’s academic minor in romance fiction and an online creative writing course on the subject, in addition to the American romance collection in Hoover Library, which has established McDaniel as one of the few centers for the study of the romance genre.

McDaniel English professor Pam Regis, a nationally recognized expert on romance novels and author of “A Natural History of the Romance Novel,” organized an international conference in November 2011 at the college, which included presentations on popular romance in the new millennium.

About the grant, Roger Casey, president of McDaniel College, said, “This gift will allow the college to reinforce Ms. Roberts’ reputation in the academic and literary arenas as a master of and dedicated advocate for the romance genre. It will also raise the profile of the romance novel among scholars and the academic community.”

Nora Roberts is a best-selling author of more than 200 romance novels. Her first, “Irish Thoroughbred,” was published in 1981. More than 280 million copies of her books are in print, including 12 million copies sold in 2005 alone. McDaniel College awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 2006.

For more information about McDaniel College, visit www.mcdaniel.edu or call 410-857-2290. 
 

More Romance in the New Millennium

Laura Vivanco

Continuing on from the tweeted summary of the keynote speech given to the McDaniel College Popular Romance in the New Millennium conference, and Jonathan's discussion of the ideas contained in his paper, here are some links about the conference. I suspect many of you will have read some or all of them already, but I wanted to provide them for those who haven't, and to create an archive of links.

There's a description posted on the McDaniel College website of a pre-conference talk given by Lisa Dale (author of Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier) and of a workshop run by Amy Burge. Jessica, of Read React Review, summarises Amy's presentation (in which she discussed this and a previous workshop) and also gives a summary of the presentation by Glinda Hall. Amy's own reflections on her McDaniel workshop can be found at her personal blog.

Jessica has also written a summary of Eloisa James's keynote speech.

Smart Bitch Sarah's summary of the entire conference makes particular mention of Mary Bly/Eloisa James's keynote address, Glinda Hall's "discussion of what including romance in courses does to the classroom community," An Goris's plenary address on the works of Nora Roberts, Samantha Sabalis's "Lacanian analysis of Courtney Milan’s Proof by Seduction and Unveiled," and Maryan Wherry's "feminist literary critical examination of the sex in romance."

Jessica has a fairly full discussion of her own paper: she

presented on authorship with a colleague. We have project going that traces a Romantic conception of authorship in women’s writing about authorship from the Minerva Press era (late 18th-early 19th century) through today’s popular romances.

Angela Toscano's paper on "The Liturgy of Cliché: Ritual Speech and Genre Convention in Popular Romance" is up here. The throbbing core of her argument is that:

It is an oft repeated criticism of popular romance that the genre is formulaic. The cliché use of language is indicative of this formula; it seems to expose the romance as the very “mass–produced fantasies for women” that Tania Modleski accused them of being. But let us assume that authors know what they are doing. That they are using cliché not because they are unable or unwilling to come up with better metaphors, more original similes, but rather because the cliché is doing something within the text that another phrase may fail to do.

Toscano proposes that "repetition is only problematic if one takes the view that to repeat oneself or to repeat someone else is to fail to properly use language. It presumes that originality is the highest form of narrative. That to say what has never been said and to say it in way that has never been said before is the supreme expression of language." She suggests that repetition, in certain areas of life, can in fact be considered a sign of success because there are "actions that need, want, and are desired to be done again. They are the appetites: sex, sleep, food, love. Love is not final. It is never done. The fulfillment of love, like sex, like food, is in its repetition" and she argues that "Story, like sex, incites the desire for more stories." In addition, she considers that in romance cliché can be considered

liturgical. It is a type of magical speech, as in the language of the Christian mass which transforms the substance of the wafer into the body of Jesus Christ. In the mass this is not metaphor but an actual substantive and physical change. In the world of the narrative, the cliché comprises a series of speeches that, like the mass, become the means by which a substantive transformation occurs in the persons and the bodies of the hero and heroine.

To fill some of the gaps, I'm also including some of the tweets from the conference (these may have been very slightly edited, to remove typos or fill out more obscure abbreviations). They were written by Smart Bitch Sarah Wendell (in purple), Jessica from Read React Review (in blue), and Sarah Frantz (in black). Since both Jessica and Sarah Frantz were giving papers, this impeded their ability to report on some of the panels, so even with these tweets to fill the gaps, not all the papers are covered.

---------

Third panelist is Jung Choi at Program for General Ed at Harvard titled "On Teaching the Romance Novel." Choi, quoting Derrida: "The center is not the center." Change one word, change center, relationship between center and margin. What is marginalized will come to center - for example, romance studied at Harvard. Behind images of emotional coldness, intellectuality, there have been constant image of love at Harvard: Love Story, Legally Blonde Inside ivory towers/ivy walls, Choi believes has been steady fascination with sex and romance. Choi did same assignment she gave students: shop for romance at Harvard bookstore. "Where are the Harlequin novels displayed?" Horrified reaction. "We don't carry trade books." Clerk couldn't say "Harlequin." "Romance has power to threaten what is a center." Quote from Northanger Abbey from Choi: "seems a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist." "Let us be united and let us celebrate."

jung choi, from harvard, on teaching the romance novel, is next. choi wondered whether she should attend this con, because she teaches the romance, not popular romance. choi starts with derrida quote, the center is not the center. choi's point is that the center we consider stable may be shaken up. relation bt center and margin is fluid. choi's romance course is dominated by women students. all female writers and topics such as marriage may explain that. for choi, issue is not just topics or gender, but location at margins, that prevents more male students from taking romance course. choi notes increase of students' interest in and desire to read strong female characters in romance course. choi assigns students to go out and find mass market romances in the community. look at display, marketing, etc. students are assigned to do an in depth study of one romance novel. part of the assignment is to read the romance in a public place and note reactions of peers. in 2008 choi went to harvard book store to ask for a harlequin novel. salesperson was dumbstruck. unable to repeat word "harlequin", clerk said, "we dont carry trade books." which is false. choi, "the happiest delineations of the varieties of human nature are celebrated in romance."

Up now is Jayashree Kamble on teaching literary canon alongside romance. For ex: Governess Novel: Jayne Eyre, Midnight Angel @lisakleypas, Turn of the Screw, Maybe This Time, Jennifer Crusie. Kamble encouraged students to use subjects that apply to their lives, i.e. using 1st person shooter Halo to discuss 1st person POV. "Eat Pray Love: appallingly bad movie, amazing in its exoticization of Italians, Indians and Indonesians." I have syllabi here. Section on "Love & communication" has Austen P&P, Flowers/Storm - Kinsale, Your Wicked Ways, Naked in Death. Secondary texts include Love Actually, Lady Hawke, Episode of Bones. Naked in Death included bc Eve Dallas has real problems with communication & emotional idioms. Kamble has students cite other students' papers, partly to teach citation, plagiarism, and what academic peer review is like.

j kamble shares syllabi. ex. the governess novel. incl j eyre, turn of screw, mistress mellyn, midnite angel, maybe this time j kamble's course on the exotic: wuthering, heart darkness, heart of fire, heart of the seas, seduce me at sunrise. kamble also uses variety of 2ndary texts in media theory, criticism. ex. levine's highbrow/lowbrow, belsey's a future for criticism

Now: Bill Gleason, “Teaching Romance in the Popular American Literature Survey” from Princeton U. Gleason: early version of course did not include romance fiction, but thought it did. Current version: A LOT of romance fiction. Course begins with Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662) as examination of books that were popular and some that still are, thru 20thC. Romance: Bet Me (2004) Students pick last book of the reading list, they decide. Nominate text, then class votes. Two years ago: Harry Potter, Sorcerer's Stone. Then Gossip Girl. Course is set up in "genres" and what that means: Seduction, Adventure, Mystery, Romance. Course focuses on the idea that the historical context of what is popular and WHEN it is popular is crucial to study. In 1993, Gleason thought was inc romance b/c he had GONE WITH THE WIND on the syllabus, w/ Krentz's DANGEROUS MEN. Offers covers to camouflage Bet Me: Cover for Beowulf, The History of Otero and Crowley Counties Colorado for embarrassed students. Comprehensive final exam, progression of class texts "makes romance fiction seem part of continuum, not outlier." Course presently is 2/3rds female, 1/3 male. One thing Gleason can't do is real sense of breadth and range of romance fiction. Students have asked for course just on romance fic.

bill gleason of princeton says in 1993 he taught GWTW thinking it was romance. gleason says he teaches bet me by jenny crusie. this is a topics in am lit course at princeton. Many Princeton students deeply embarrassed to read romance novels. Offer them camouflage book covers: Tarzan, Beowulf. ...gleason says having romance arrive at end means he can start talking about romance on first day of class. gleason emphasizes romance themes in earlier texts like last of mohicans. gleason tries to help students see romance as part of a continuum, not an outlier. 

"Sneaking it in at the End: Introducing Popular Romance into the Small College Classroom” by Antonia Losano, who was unable to come. Eric Selinger is reading paper for scholar in absentia. Small colleges can be troubling for instructors because required courses take up time of small faculty, not room for flexibility. Lack of flexibility can marginalize romance, for example, because requirements for established canon classes for major students. Losano: Every time I tried to sneak a romance in at the end, it was a pedagogical failure. Students disliked inclusion of P&P and Frederica. "Frederica" has no redeeming values, said one student in eval. Course included Pamela and Welcome to Temptation. Students liked Pamela, didn't like Temptation. Losano was baffled. Losano presented Roberts' The Search as contemporary fiction featuring dogs for dogs in literature course. Was accepted w/o problems. Didn't reveal it was a "romance" so it was discussed without rejection. Losano asks: in what framing methods can we introduce romances into our courses? Concl: most successful method Middlebury College is hide romance completely in courses by not saying it's romance.

Now Selinger talking about his own experience teaching romance fiction at DePaul. Has done so for years. @angoris pointed out that Selinger's syllabi of romance text lacked, among other things, Carpathians and tycoons. Selinger had student who refused to buy romances because they were so embarrassing Selinger assigned her to think about that refusal. "What are you a sucker for?" These novels will teach you that. Students have written to say romances have taught them to leave bad relationships, challenge professors who dismiss romance. Selinger says one prof at DePaul would query on 1st day which students had read @harlequinbooks, then say they should be ashamed. Selinger: "He doesn't do that anymore."

EricSelinger says two rewards of teaching romance fiction are 1. they illuminate complexities of both emotional and textual desire and, says @EricSelinger, this turns student into readers, into scholars. second, romance teaches students about beautiful circuits and subterfuges of their own desires. 

"The wired world of romance scholarship," Kat Schroder, student in Masters of Commm in Digital Media at U of Washington. "Online communities offer what James Gee calls an 'affinity space.'" online spaces encourage active sharing of knowledge. Romance communities are comprised of blogs, bboards, podcasts, social communities. Romance author websites being used for examples: Jennifer Crusie, Eloisa James. Jenny Crusie uses her blog to solicit help for plot points, names, titles, and allow audience to have role in shaping text. Reading is an active process in which readers construct textual meaning. In Crusie example, readers construct text and meaning. James' Facebook community allows readers equal access to text and "day in life of bestselling author" with video Q&A. Online community "changes what book is, shows how elastic parameters of a book are now." Boundaries between reader author friend and fan are blurry now. [Also, I point out, definition of "Friend" is varied as well. People who come to my home, eat w me not = FB friends, online friends.] Trying to link how internet has allowed academic study of romance to flourish. I am learning that there are terms for things like how many links, directions of links. Eigenvector Centrality: influence! All of the people who are part of IASPR network on twitter: in graphic. @sarahfrantz is center.

Now I'm listening to *business* professor Chryssa Sharp talk about "using cross-cultural frameworks to examine American attitudes. Sharp is proposing that we use international management models to examine affect of emotion in romance novels. How do values contained w/in popular romance line up w/ US cultural norms? What would cross-cultural comparisons show?

Romance, Readers, Affect

Jonathan A. Allan

During my lecture at McDaniel, I returned to Susan Quilliam’s polemic and asked about the place of romance in therapy, therapy in romance. As a literary theorist, there are aspects of Quilliam’s work that I want to agree with, namely that romance – like any literary text – has an affective power. We are moved to laughter, to tears, to joy, to sadness, to pleasure by the texts we read. Dina Georgis, though not writing about romance novels, writes: "By awakening us to loss, literature incites our weeping" ("Hearing the better Story" 171). But, to recognise this affective power and possibility is to also recognise that Quilliam asserts, romances teach readers to have sex without condoms. Where Quilliam and I depart is about the role romance can and does have in the lives of readers and writers.

We are reminded often enough about the dangers of romance fiction. Jean Lush and Pam Vredevelt’s Women and Stress: Practical Ways to Manage Tension provides a telling example:

When I was writing my first book, Emotional Phases of a Woman's Life, I decided to investigate the reading material women were buying. I called bookstores and secondhand shops that handled thousands of paperbacks. One morning, in a used-book store, I witnessed a woman bringing in a huge sack of romantic novels to exchange for dozens more. I asked her why she read so many of these books, and she said, "I love romance. It's my escape from a humdrum life, I guess." [...]

Why is there such a colossal market for romantic paperbacks? Some would say this is one positive way women can stimulate their love life. However, many romance novel readers admit to being addicted to these books. They express a desire to break the habit because it robs them of time for other healthy involvements.

I think these books serve as a substitute for reality for some women who do not feel romantically fulfilled, but I question the benefits of getting lost in fiction. If anything, this habit may stir up unrealistic expectations and make them feel less satisfied with life as it is. (81)

I am willing to recognize, as I did in my lecture, that there are probably "extreme readers" for whom the romance novel is genuinely an addiction, but these readers are "extreme." As for "escap[ing] from a humdrum life," I'd imagine that many of us read fiction to "escape" our daily lives. Orhan Pamuk opens The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist with these words:

Novels are second lives. Like the dreams that the French poet Gérard de Nerval speaks of, novels reveal the colors and complexities of our lives and are full of people, faces, and objects we feel we recognize. Just as in dreams, when we read novels we are sometimes so powerfully struck by the extraordinary nature of the things we encounter that we forget where we are and envision ourselves in the midst of the imaginary events and people we are witnessing. At such times, we feel that the fictional world we encounter and enjoy is more real that the real world itself. (3)

Of course this could become a problem, a problem that leads Don Quixote to fight windmills in search of Dulcinea, a problem that leads Madame Bovary to be lost in romantic fantasy. But is this genuinely the "norm" and if it is the "norm" is it so extreme that it requires an intervention? For Donna Patrow, this is a reason for concern:

her inclination toward soap opera addiction will undoubtedly compromise her mental purity. [...] With that type of lifestyle, she's inclined to attract the wrong sort of friends - friends who drag her down rather than challenge her to grow mentally and spiritually. Maybe her soap opera buddies will introduce her to racy romance novels, and she'll become addicted to those, as well (see 2 Cor. 12:20; 2 Thess. 3:11). This can lead to a type of emotional adultery that is extremely destructive to your love life. (105-106)

Romance fiction, like soap operas, may very well be dangerous but this presumes that all readers of romance fiction will become "addicted" to a point where the addiction is debilitating and interferes with daily life to such a degree that some radical change is needed. Such a perspective is, to my mind, the most dystopian reading of romantic fiction (at least on the critic’s part). Surely, there is a way in which the critic can imagine a more utopian outcome for romantic fiction.

In my paper, I argued that indeed romantic fiction could serve more utopian ends. The argument that I am interested in is about what romantic fiction can teach its readers. If romantic fiction is powerful enough to teach readers not to use condoms, it surely too must be endowed with a similar power to teach readers about what an ideal relation might look like. I am not arguing that all relations will be ideal and everything will work out perfectly, indeed, I don't think many romance novels advocate this either. Pamela Regis’s eight components of a romance novel don't begin with perfection and then outline another seven perfect steps. The romance novel includes: conflict, points of ritual death, barriers. What romance does differently than lived romances is that it guarantees a happily ever after, but that happily ever after is only possible because the relation is itself a journey in which the reader and the heroine encounter barriers to the relationship, conflicts intrinsic to the relationship (which often enough reflect very real conflicts that can translate to the reader’s own life), and points of ritual death. The point of romance fiction, I argued, is less the happily ever after (though we demand this) and more the journey towards the happily ever after.

Tweets from the New Millennium

Laura Vivanco

Yesterday's "Keynote Address by Professor Mary Bly/NYT Bestselling Author Eloisa James" was live-tweeted from the Popular Romance in the New Millennium conference being held at McDaniel College. There will be more tweets today. If you'd like to follow them, the hashtag being used is #mcdrom , or if you aren't on twitter, you can read them online here.

I thought I'd copy out the relevant bits of yesterday's tweets (authored by Sarah Frantz), to keep them for posterity and in case anyone would like to discuss the keynote address:

Introducing @eloisajames: "Sex acts, social identity, and the state of the field in romance scholarship."

Romance scholarship is in a good state, according to @eloisajames.

"ebook sales make up for lost paper sales" That's @eloisajames' experience. Describing how the publishing industry (and, obviously, romance publishing industry) is in flux and extreme change.

Squabbling over boundaries of romance is a waste of time. Romance is about the hidden order of the world. Love at heart of maze. Genre is undefinable. Mutable is difficult to write about for romance scholarship.

Quoting romance scholarship article about vampires and how the article doesn't specify pub dates of books = bad scholarship. Paranormal rules about "fated mates" has changed. Scholarship has to be specific to pub dates and not make sweeping statements.

Pet peeve of @eloisajames is scholarship that throws around word "patriarchy." Patriarchy is mutable. Scholarship needs to address specific discourses about "patriarchy."

Romance novels' engagement w/ history particularly fraught in relation to historical romance. "My heroes generally have equipment the size of the Hubble telescope." "Bodice rippers" specific term for historical romance novels from 1980s, says @eloisajames. (I'd say 1970s, early 1980s, actually.) "Eroticism is culturally specific and we write sex from our own attitudes and mores. Can't be 'historically accurate.'" Keep two viewpoints: 1. author and voice, and 2. specific cultural moment in which book was written.

.@eloisajames is stunned when romance scholars make arguments about an author w/o looking at website/shooting them email. Bestsellers built from strong emotions. @eloisajames wrote 5th Desperate Duchess book from "bedrock of truth" of worry over husband. "Romances live or die on strong emotions." You're going to find author utterly exposed behind book. That's not "cultural."

Rules dictating genre are not necessarily stronger than the specific author's oeuvre. Critics: "Iron-clad grip of genre" trivializes individualism of texts. Standardization does not sacrifice individualism.

@eloisajames compared w/ Gabriel Garcia Marquez by reader, as an insult. also been compared w/ Nicholas Sparks as an insult. But they're both selling really well, so...


Readers create their own novel in the intersection of readers' experience and the novel itself. What author is + does is changing, so it's important for scholars to be in touch w/ authors. [FASCINATING: been slammed for this.] Social media is commodifying the charisma of the author. Before: author's job ended w/ final draft. Not now. On social platforms. Books change according to reader feedback. Characters change over a series b/c of feedback.

Greatest shadow that clings to romance: cultural capital. "Capital enables one to maintain status in heirarchy."  Romance doesn't seem to have very much cultural capital, certainly doesn't have much cultural cache. But it has money. No romance reader will rise in her cultural heirarchy based on what is termed her "addiction."

@eloisajames' Beast based on House from TV show, but Beauty was based on J. Alfred Prufrock. Heroine dying in "chambers of sea." Cultural capital of DUKE OF MINE: based on Princess and Pea fairytale (mattresses and pea). Hero on Asperger's scale.

Teach a vampire book from each of 1988, 1995, 2003 and talk about how the mating rituals change.

Nobody can steal or plagiarize a voice and that's what doesn't change. Wld be interesting to teach students to look for voice.

Question: putting too much weight on romance to focus on cultural capital? @EloisaJames: Don't talk about "genre," focus on author.

Teaching Romance

Laura Vivanco

The Popular Romance in the New Millennium conference is taking place at McDaniel College from November 10-11 as a direct result of the Nora Roberts Foundation's decision to give

McDaniel College a $100,000 grant to help advance research and study of romance literature, establish an academic minor in the genre fiction and launch an online creative writing course in romance fiction.

It had been stated that "Pedagogy, the teaching of romance, will be an important focus of the conference" but all the same, when reading the abstracts of the papers to be presented, I was struck by how many are about the teaching of romance fiction and left feeling very hopeful about the future of popular romance studies.

Jung Choi - “‘The Romance’ at Harvard”

Jung Choi "is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and a teaching fellow in the Department of Women’s Studies at Harvard University":

As a graduate teaching fellow at Harvard, I have taught sections of a course called “The Romance,” which examines women’s genre fiction such as the Harlequin and “chick lit,” along with works by Austen, the Brontë sisters, and DuMaurier. Based on my teaching experiences, I would like to explore why teaching romance fiction matters; what we can learn from students’ responses; and how we can address the issues of women, gender, and sexuality while studying the romance.

William Gleason - “Teaching Romance in the Popular American Literature Survey”

Bill Gleason "is Professor of English and Acting Director of American Studies at Princeton University [...], he was also co–convener, with Eric Murphy Selinger, of Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture, a two–day interdisciplinary conference on romance fiction held at Princeton in April 2009":

I have been teaching “American Best Sellers,” an upper–level undergraduate survey course on American popular writing, since the mid–1990s. Moving from the colonial period to the present, the course examines roughly one text and historical period per week while simultaneously introducing students to a broad range of genres, including the tale of seduction, the sentimental novel, children’s fiction, the western, the detective novel, the adventure series, and (with increasing emphasis in recent syllabi) contemporary romance fiction. In this talk I will discuss the challenges of (and opportunities for) teaching romance as one among many genres in the popular lit survey.

Glinda F. Hall - “Teaching Romance/Teaching Sex: Classroom Challenges and Pedagogical Pursuits”

Glinda Hall "has returned to Arkansas State University as an Instructor in First Year Studies after holding an assistant professor position at the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith":

In spring 2010, I taught a senior–level English course titled “Beyond Heaving Bosoms: Women’s Popular Romance Fiction.” My plan was to focus on the history and heritage of popular romance fiction, with particular attention paid to gender dynamics and power structures at work in both the content and the reception of this genre of popular fiction. However, I soon learned that another topic was inescapable, and apparently more relevant to my students: sex. It then became clear that a significant portion of the course needed to address issues of sexuality, especially our culture’s view of women’s sexuality and how these are related to other issues: gender representation, power dynamics, political contexts, and economic realities for our contemporary society. In this presentation, I will discuss the practical exigencies of “teaching sex” in the context of popular romance fiction, as well as the intellectual questions that such pedagogy raises about how we teach and study literature.

Jayashree Kamble - “Romancing the Canon: Teaching ‘Literary’ Texts with Romance”

Jayashree Kamble "earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota’s English department":

Classic literature and genre fiction intersect more often than literary critics and students might realize. Therefore, even though popular romance is unarguably a distinct genre with its own parameters, it can also be taught alongside canonical texts. While courses that focus exclusively on romance fiction can subject the genre to a scrutiny that it both merits and can withstand, courses that combine romance and high literature make a different case for including the genre in the field of literary studies. For instance, pairing Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with Linda Howard’s Heart of Fire creates room to discuss issues of exoticism in both, while also affording a chance to examine the aesthetics of the Victorian novella and popular romance. Similarly, a course that contains Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Jennifer Crusie’s adaptation of it in Maybe This Time, allows for a discussion on authorial style as well as the signifiers of the horror and romance genres.

Antonia Losano - “Sneaking it in at the end: Introducing Popular Romance into the Small College Classroom”

Antonio Losano "teaches literature and gender studies at Middlebury College in Vermont":

Mounting innovative new courses on popular culture is always challenging, but the endeavor has particular tensions in a small English department at a small Liberal Arts college. If I were to offer a course solely on popular romance, either one of the gateway courses, or a seminal survey, or the Victorian literature course wouldn’t get taught that year (and if English majors can’t get the courses they need to graduate, parents who are spending over $50,000 a year on this education start complaining). My contention, however, is that this constraint can be intensely productive for the study and teaching of popular romance, which need not be lost–it must simply be incorporated.

Instead of being taught in a stand–alone course, romances can and should, I argue, be folded into the fabric of the academic canon. A course just on popular romance runs the risk of isolating and marginalizing the popular romance–as if we were trying to keep it from infecting the Beowulf to Virginia Woolf survey, for example. It has been my strategy to include at least one popular romance novel into the syllabus of each course I teach, encouraging students to realize that the boundaries between romance fiction and “canonical” fiction are more permeable than critics of the former would like. In this conference paper I hope to offer suggestions on ways to engage with the popular romance in academic courses within the context of literary history.

Eric Selinger - “You Teach a Whole Course on Popular Romance? Who? How? Why? Now What?”

Eric Murphy Selinger "is Associate Professor of English at DePaul University":

In the fall of 2005 I taught DePaul University’s first course exclusively devoted to popular romance fiction: a gen–ed survey that ran from E.M. Hull’s The Sheik to the then–new Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. I have since taught over 25 popular romance courses, from undergraduate surveys to graduate seminars, including a 10–week class on Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm; the novels range from inspirational to LGBTQ and erotic romances, and include both category and single–title texts. My talk will discuss the practicalities of classes devoted exclusively to popular romance fiction (course design, assignments and helpful secondary readings, issues in classroom dynamics), as well as the aesthetic and literary–historical questions raised by introducing such courses into a fairly conservative English department, one in which popular romance remains the abjected Other of “literature.”

More details about the presenters, and abstracts of the other papers being presented at the conference, can be found here.

The "Special Relationship" Allegorised and Other Links

Laura Vivanco

• io9 claim that

Gregory Casparian's The Anglo-American Alliance. A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906), [is] the first lesbian science fiction novel [...]. An Anglo-American Alliance would have been better (and extraordinarily progressive) had Aurora and Margaret lived happily ever after as women, it must be admitted. Nonetheless, An Anglo-American Alliance is the first science fiction novel with a pair of lesbian lovers as heroines, one of whom becomes science fiction's first transgender hero.

It would also have been more "progressive" had it not been the case that after her transformation "all the accomplishments, knowledge and mental attributes possessed by Margaret, prior to her re-incarnation, had been intensified a hundred-fold in their entity into those of aggressive, daring and strenuous masculinity" (115). This emphasis on the differences between men and women is perhaps not surprising given that earlier in the novel the reader was informed that in 1918 "The Women's Clubs" had decided to abandon any idea of women entering politics and instead "confine all their energies to civic, educational and humanitarian channels and things pertaining to Home" (51). In addition, prior to the success of Margaret's operation, one of the "fears and misgivings" of the doctor carrying it out is "What, if she should prove to be a man with effeminate mind and manners?" (113).

The novel also contains statements such as "the Jews are not a pioneer race" (58), "the [...] inhabitants of the isolated islands of the Shetlands and Orkneys [...] led an indolent life" (72), and

the discovery, by an American, of a germicide for indolence was announced [...], by which lethargic persons were regenerated into acute activity. [...]
The negroes of the Southern States, the natives of tropical countries and also officials in the police departments of large cities, were the ones benefitted by this "golden medical discovery!" (77-78) 

Casparian presents the novel as a "frivolously allegorical narrative" (ix) inspired by the idea of a union "between two of the foremost and best forms of Government - America and Britain" (viii-ix), which makes it an interesting take on the "special relationship." If it is "the first lesbian science fiction novel," then it's presumably also the first lesbian science fiction romance.

• Given the scarcity of military heroes in contemporary Mills & Boon romances edited in the UK, I was surprised to see that Mills & Boon have re-released three of them in a volume raising money for Help for Heroes.

• Rachel Cooke at the Guardian has read the new Heyer biography and asks

What, I wonder, is the point of this book? Who is it for? According to its jacket, Jennifer Kloester is "the foremost expert on Heyer" (as if the world's universities were crammed with her competitors, all of them writing PhDs on The Grand Sophy and Regency Buck). What this means in practice is that she tells you everything – I mean everything – about a woman whose life was simply not very interesting. This is a biography in which the pregnancy of a daughter-in-law is giant news. Yes, Kloester has had, courtesy of Heyer's late son, Sir Richard Rougier (the high court judge who once claimed never to have heard of bouncy castles), unbridled access to Heyer's papers, but since these include no exciting love letters, and nothing in the way of literary gossip, one wishes she had not felt obliged to quote from them so extensively. (One letter, in which Heyer complains to her agent about her publisher, Heinemann, is reprinted over three pages.)

My impression (I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive) is that the book was written for those who have already read Jane Aiken Hodge's biography of Heyer and think that Heyer's "angry letters to her literary agent, Leonard Parker Moore, refusing to see why she should permit Cartland to steal her ideas and research" (Alberge) constitute "literary gossip." We may not all be "writing PhDs on The Grand Sophy and Regency Buck" but we're probably the kind of people who'd be interested in reading those PhDs.

• If you're that kind of person, you might also be interested in attending

Popular Romance in the New Millennium, a gathering of romance scholars to be held November 10 and 11 at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD.  Register at the conference website:

http://www.mcdaniel.edu/romance/

[...] Highlights include a keynote by Professor Mary Bly/NY Times Bestselling Eloisa James on the state of romance criticism, a plenary address by An Goris of KULeuven on the work of Nora Roberts, and a Q&A with Smart Bitches Sarah Wendell on the future of romance.

---
The illustration came from Wikimedia Commons and depicts a

poster [...] used for the promotion of the United States and Great Britain Industrial Exposition in the late 19th century (1899-1900).
Shows Columbia and Britannia in the background holding flags, and Uncle Sam and John Bull in the foreground shaking hands.

Update: CFP for Popular Romance in the New Millennium

Laura Vivanco

I've already posted the call for papers for this conference but I've received an update with some new information

McDaniel College

and

The Nora Roberts Foundation

are proud to sponsor

Popular Romance in the New Millennium

An International Conference

November 10-11, 2011
Westminster, Maryland

Keynote address: Professor Mary Bly/NYT Bestseller Eloisa James

As previously mentioned, proposals need to be submitted to pregis (at) mcdaniel (dot) edu by June 1, 2011. More details can be found at the original CFP. Please note that

Complementary hotel accommodation for presenters and free transportation to Westminster for all conferees from the BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport and the BWI Thurgood Marshall Amtrak station will be provided.

CFP: Popular Romance in the New Millennium

Laura Vivanco

News of this conference and call for papers has just come in from Pamela Regis. Pam is the author of A Popular History of the Romance Novel and is organising the conference:

McDaniel College

is proud to sponsor

Popular Romance in the New Millennium

An International Conference

November 10-11, 2011
Westminster, Maryland*

Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2011

The popular romance has come of age.

Almost four decades ago, with the publication of The Flame and the Flower, the boom in North American romance publication began. Three decades ago major critical work on the popular romance began to appear.

Popular Romance in the New Millennium will gather presenters who can put the romance in fresh perspective, who can point us toward the future of romance and romance criticism, and who can help us understand the place of the popular romance in the 21st century.

Presentations are requested on print, e-published, film, web, and other popular romance—YA or adult—from any culture, and from any period. Critics from across the theoretical spectrum, as well as authors, bloggers, editors, and booksellers are invited.

Presentation topics include but are not limited to: Single-author studies; papers on emerging authors, filmmakers, or other romance creators; on emerging sub-genres; and offering new perspectives on older works. Presenters on romance readers and romance reading, blogs and blogging, online romance culture, and writing romance in the digital age are welcome.

In view of the increasing number of college courses focusing on or including this genre, presentations are encouraged on teaching the popular romance.

Individual papers, panels, interactive presentations, and interviews are welcome.

Proposal guidelines: By June 1, 2011, submit as an email attachment to pregis (at) mcdaniel (dot) edu:

An abstract (100 words)
A bio (no longer than 100 words)
A/V needs

*Complementary hotel accommodation for presenters and free transportation to Westminster for all conferees from the BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport and the BWI Thurgood Marshall Amtrak station will be provided. McDaniel College’s 160-acre campus overlooks Westminster, a walkable town with a population of about 18,000.