Links: Obituaries, Shakespeare, Ethics, and Psychology

Laura Vivanco

Both Harlequin Mills & Boon author Elizabeth Oldfield and romance cover artist Pino have recently died.

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Laurie E. Osborne has written a number of academic articles on Shakespeare and popular romance (they're listed at the Romance Wiki). There is some overlap between the information contained in them and the information which appears on her Romancing the Bard website, but they're not identical. The site explores the uses of Shakespeare and Shakespearean references in popular romance novels:

In my attention to the ways that romance novelists incorporate Shakespearean texts into their generic requirements, I am implicitly agreeing with recent arguments about the significance of romance novel. Critics like Janice Radway and Carol Thurston cite romance's predominantly female authorship and readership, as well as its economic clout in the book industry as some reasons that cultural critics should attend more closely to its generic features and constructed fantasies. Examining the incorporation of the "patriarchal bard" into these popular novels potentially contributes to the ongoing arguments about whether the romance constitutes a reincorporation of dangerous patriarchal ideologies (as most academic critics seems to argue) or feminine empowerment.

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Jessica, of Read, React, Review, has put up part 2 of her series of posts on ethical criticism of genre fiction: "This is a sketch of a project I am working on, and of a paper I gave at the Popular Culture Association conference in April."

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Marie-Joelle Estrada's recent PhD thesis seeks to evaluate "romantic actions." It's available online via Duke University Library. In it she mentions that

According to the Romantic Construal Model, people’s judgments of whether a particular act is romantic is determined by three factors: the degree to which the action is (a) personalized (personalization), (b) special (specialness), and (c) conveys that the actor values the relationship (conveyed value). Personalization refers to the extent to which an action is tailored specifically to the receiver’s idiosyncratic personality, interests, preferences, and dislikes. Specialness refers to how “out-of-the-ordinary” the act is, the degree to which the act positively deviates from everyday partner actions. Conveyed value is the degree to which receiver perceives that the act originated from or conveys the actor’s high esteem for the receiver and the relationship. According to the model, higher levels of personalization, specialness, and conveyed value increase the likelihood that a particular expression or behavior will be regarded as romantic. (10-11)

It seems to me that romance novels frequently contain romantic actions which are depicted as personalised and special and which convey "the actor’s high esteem for the receiver and the relationship." In a forthcoming essay, "One Ring to Bind Them: Ring Symbolism in the Modern Romance Genre," in New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction. Ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Eric M. Selinger, I've analysed some depictions of rings given to heroines by heroes, and one of the things I noticed about them was the frequent personalisation of these gifts. Furthermore, there were also a few contrasting instances of rings which lacked personalisation, and which were given to heroines by men who were not heroes. The correlation between hero status and personalisation of the ring, and between non-hero status and a lack of personalisation of the ring, accords with Estrada's suggestion that

Personalization [...] symbolizes that the actor cares enough to pay attention to details about a partner’s likes and dislikes (thereby suggesting that he or she is important enough to warrant cataloguing the smallest preferences) and knows the partner well enough to make appropriate behavioral choices. Remembering specific preferences also ensures that the behavior is one that the receiver will like, suggesting that the actor ultimately aims to make the receiver happy. (11)

In Cathy Williams's The Italian's One-Night Love-Child the hero's gift-giving to the heroine is very special (it differs from his usual method of gift-giving) and personalised, both of which facts reveal to the reader (if not, at this point, to the hero) that he considers his relationship with her to be of high value:

Cristiano had never, personally, involved himself in the tedious pastime of buying presents for women. Firstly, he didn't have time to waste dithering in shops, peering at items of jewellery and asking sales assistants for help. Secondly, he could think of nothing more soul-destroying than trying to rack his brains and come up with a suitable present for any woman. No, this was where his faithful PA had always come into her own. A woman buying for another woman. Made sense.
For the past six weeks, however, he had ditched the PA in favour of the personal touch and had found the exercise a lot less arduous than he had expected. In fact ... he had discovered that there was a great deal of enjoyment to be had browsing in the shops for things that would put a smile on Bethany's face. [...] Having made the initial mistake of buying her jewellery, which all women presumably loved, incredibly expensive jewellery with super-watt diamonds, only to find his present politely accepted and then equally politely returned, he had revised his ideas. [...]
'I just bet this is the sort of stuff you're accustomed to giving your girlfriends,' she had shrewdly remarked [...].
Cristiano, who had never failed to rise to a challenge, had become imaginative. (136-37)

This passage also reveals another element often present in romantic gestures:

A potential moderator included in the Romantic Construal Model involves the degree to which the personalization or specialness of the action is seen as requiring effort on the actor’s part [...] even though effort is not essential to romantic construal, greater effort on the actor’s behalf serves to increase the intensity of the action’s impact on the receiver because it implies that the actor cared enough to sacrifice time, effort, or other resources for the receiver. (Estrada 14)

Estrada also mentions that

Social supportive behaviors convey affection indirectly through helpful and caring acts. They include behaviors such as giving compliments, offering financial assistance, doing favors, and accomplishing tasks to help the other person. Although supportive behaviors are indirect, if perceived by the receiver as communicating affection, they can “speak louder than words” and convey positive regard more powerfully than verbal or nonverbal expressions. Although socially supportive behaviors are an important way of communicating affection, recipients may construe supportive behaviors as practical rather than affectionate, or they might not even be noticed by the intended recipient. (3)

As regards such gestures in fictional relationships, Jennifer Crusie has offered the following piece of writing advice:

Cut those romantic declarations you’ve been slaving over, the ones that sound long-winded and dorky no matter how hard you try. Go for the action; the telling gesture is infinitely more effective than telling dialogue.

However, presumably this is only likely to be effective for readers if they recognise the actions as romantic. What happens if the readers "construe supportive behaviors as practical rather than affectionate"? And while it might be effective if the actions are not initially "noticed by the intended recipient" within the novel, it's not likely to be so effective if the readers also skim over the actions without really paying much attention to them. Getting back to real life,

Experts from the University of North Carolina in the US studied how couples behave when responding to nice gestures.

They found that simply doing something for somebody else does not automatically generate feelings of gratitude. Instead, people can feel indebted or not notice the exchange at all, especially if things have become routine.

Yet those who respond in a positive way and show gratitude can expect greater feelings of satisfaction about the relationship. Their partners also feel better, too. (Press Association)

An abstract of the article by Sara B. Algoe, Shelly L. Gable and Natalya C. Maisel can be found here and there's a longer description of its findings here.

Now I'm wondering what an analysis of the "supportive behaviors" in romance novels would show, and whether romances would provide support for the Romantic Construal Model.
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• Crusie, Jennifer. "The Five Things I’ve Learned About Writing Romance from TV."
• Estrada, Marie-Joelle. Testing the Romantic Construal Model: The Impact of Personalization, Specialness, and Value in Evaluating Romantic Actions. Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience in the Graduate School of Duke University, 2010.
• Williams, Cathy. The Italian's One-Night Love-Child. Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2010.

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The image is of some rosemary, drawn by Francisco Manuel Blanco. It came from Wikimedia Commons. Shakespeare's Ophelia observed, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember." My thanks to Tumperkin, who gave me a copy of The Italian's One-Night Love-Child.

Reading, Ideals and Depression

Laura Vivanco

In a post about ethical criticism, Jessica has outlined different possible ways in which to approach the ethical criticism of literature. In her own ethical criticism Jessica herself does not intend to examine the possible 'consequences' that reading may cause, 'for example, causing readers to accept morally salutary or problematic attitudes'. Nonetheless, she notes that

Romance readers talk a lot about the good effects of romance reading on their beliefs, attitudes and desires. They might say reading romance has helped them to be better communicators, to understand men, to demand their due from their partners, to get in touch with their sexuality, etc. That’s cool. But if we are going to do that, we also need to consider whether romances have had any negative effects. In other words, if you are going to play the “effects on readers game” you cannot rule out a priori (for example, by saying things like “Women are not just passive readers, i.e. dopes. We know the difference between fantasy and reality. Don’t infantalize and patronize us.”) any and all claims about negative effects on readers of romance novels.

Consider: how could it be that you only learned good or positive things from romance novels?

There are two options, as far as I can see. (1) Romance novels, the entire genre, only endorse good positive healthy attitudes towards gender, romance, love, sex, and everything else they take as their subjects (however those good attitudes are defined). That seems manifestly unbelievable to me, given my own experience as a romance reader, and given how large and diverse the genre is. That comes close to saying there is only one romance novel – one very morally good romance novel — and it has been written over and over.

Or (2) you know quite well that there is a lot of stuff you wouldn’t endorse in a romance novel, some of it apparently endorsed by the (implied — more on that later) author, but either (a) you don’t read those books, or (b) if you do, you don’t “learn anything” from them, because you filter the bad stuff out. Ok, but then, you aren’t “learning” anything from romance novels. Rather, you are applying a moral framework you already possess to your selection of texts, or to your reading of texts, only letting what you have already decided are “good” messages in. In that case, it would be more accurate to say that your reading of romance novels reinforces or deepens or lends specification to moral beliefs you already hold. I think that is much closer to what is really happening, personally. But if it is, then we have to accept that if a reader holds pernicious moral beliefs, she can find some warrant, some deepening, reinforcing or specifying, of those bad moral beliefs in romance novels, too.

My feeling, as I mentioned in my response to Jessica's post, is that while of course we can try to select books which don't contain material which we'd find particularly distressing and/or offensive, it's likely that we're still going to come across 'bad stuff' in many novels and I'm not at all convinced that we can succeed in filtering all of it out all of the time.

The good effects of the genre have often been described in terms related to depression and its cure:

Alan Boon, the acknowledged genius behind [...] Mills & Boon romance, admitted the restorative quality of the novels which he edited for some forty years: 'It has been said that our books could take the place of valium, so that women who take these drugs would get an equal effect from reading our novels.' (McAleer 1999: 2)

Valium, though, like most other medicines, can have some unpleasant side-effects. In other words, the 'good stuff' may also contain some 'bad stuff'.

If we turn to a recent article by Kira Cochrane about women and depression we can find the following quote from 'psychologist and author Dorothy Rowe, a leading expert on depression':

"There's still this idea that you've got to be a wonderful mother, but you also have to have a brilliant career, and you've got to look attractive all the time," she says. "There is no way that you can maintain that and bring up children. But it's still being presented to women all the time, in every magazine, on every screen, that you should."

In the same article 'The former Scotland editor of the Observer, Lorna Martin, [who] wrote Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' is quoted as saying that:

"There's massive pressure on women these days to hold down a good, rewarding, fulfilling job, but also to be a good mother, and then to look good, and to look after yourself. I think there comes a point where your body can't take it."

In other words, it's suggested that popular culture may contribute to the creation of depression. Could romance, the 'valium' of popular culture, do this too? I suppose it depends on how much you think fiction can influence readers and whether you agree with Rowe that the depictions of women 'in every magazine, on every screen' (and, presumably, in many books) create or sustain ideals which are difficult for real women to meet, and can therefore contribute to depression. What I think is certain is that there are plenty of romances whose heroines have fulfilling jobs/hobbies/work in their communities, are (or it's implied will be) wonderful mothers, and are beautiful/well-groomed/very attractive to their spouse or partner.

Is it possible that these heroines add to the pressure on women to live up to a particular ideal of womanhood? I think they may. The presence of gender stereotypes in romances between heterosexual protagonists is something that I've seen mentioned as one of the reasons why some women may prefer to read and/or write romances between male protagonists. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of the urls where these comments were made, and I'm certainly not saying this is the main, or only reason, for the popularity of m/m romance. But if at least some readers are choosing m/m over f/m and f/f in order to avoid gender stereotypes about women, then that would be an example of how readers can filter/select their reading material in order to block out what they feel is 'bad stuff'.

Romance heroines themselves, however, rarely buckle under the pressure to succeed. As Sarah at Monkey Bear Reviews has observed,

There appear to be several taboo topics in romance novels. One of these is depression. If we assume it is something we are all likely to experience at some point in our lives, to one extreme or another, it surprises me that it is not an issue which romance authors are prepared to tackle. [...] I’m talking about a story which focuses on the sort of character who is largely ignored and immediately dismissed as dislikeable because they languish on the sofa and require smelling salts. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out why they are way they are? Don’t they also deserve a HEA?

I think they do.

Which is perhaps why I found Julia Quinn's To Sir Phillip, with Love very difficult to read. I'll leave you with a quote from the prologue and you can decide for yourself if you think it's an example of 'bad stuff'. The prologue gives the reader some information about Sir Phillip's dead wife Marina:

Marina had been melancholy. Marina had spent her entire life, or at least the entire life he'd known, melancholy. He couldn't remember the sound of her laughter, and in truth, he wasn't sure that he'd ever known it.

Nowadays, I'm fairly certain a character like Marina would be recognised as having clinical depression. After Marina has attempted suicide by throwing herself into the lake, Sir Philip thinks

How dare she refuse his rescue? Would she give up on life just because she was sad? Did her melancholy amount to more than their two children? In the balance of life, did a bad mood weigh more than their need for a mother? [...]

"I can't," she whispered, with what seemed like her last ounce of energy.

And as Phillip carried his burden home, all he could think was how apt those words were.

I can't.

In a way, it seemed to sum up her entire life.

The heroine of the novel is not the depressed Marina. She dies and is replaced by the cheerful, competent, intelligent, Eloise whom Sir Phillip finds very attractive and who knows how to manage his rebellious children perfectly.
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• Cochrane, Kira, 2010. 'Why do so many women have depression?', The Guardian, Thursday 29 April.
• Jessica, 2010. 'Ethical Criticism of Genre Fiction Part 1 (my PCA Paper)'.
• McAleer, Joseph, 1999. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
  
• Quinn, Julia. To Sir Philip, with Love. [Quotations taken from the excerpt on Julia Quinn's website.]
• Sarah, 2009. 'Romance Novels and Depression: A Taboo Topic?'.
  

The illustration is of a ditch water filter, from Wikimedia Commons.

PCA: Vampire Romance

One of the roundtable discussions at the PCA conference was "The Vampire in Literature, Culture, & Film: Roundtable—Blood, Sex, and Love: Exploring Vampire Romance Novels and Their Impact on the Image of the Vampire." Jessica hasn't posted about everything discussed there, but she has posted the results of some research she did into vampire romance: Michele Hauf, Marta Acosta, Margaret L. Carter, Michele Bardsley, L A Banks, Shiloh Walker and others shared their opinions about where they think this particular subgenre is going.

PCA Romance Panel 11: Happily Ever After: Romance Conventions In and Through Film and Fiction

Jessica "was not able to attend this final romance area panel" so she does not have notes on all the papers "but Phil kindly provided me with a copy of his paper from which to derive a summary." Phil Mathews's paper asked "Is Happily Ever After a Romance Imperative?" and Jessica has put up her summary of it. I don't want to copy and paste all of Jessica's post, so in what follows I'm taking it for granted that everyone who carries on reading this has already looked at her notes on Phil's paper.

Phil asks some interesting questions about the possible consequences of knowing that a novel is going to finish with a "happily ever after" but what I found slightly curious about his paper is that although it was written by an academic from the UK, it doesn't seem to reflect the complexity of the UK situation with regards to the "romance" genre. By that, I mean that in the UK what we have is not so much "romance" as "romantic fiction" which may, or may not, include a "happily ever after" (HEA). The RNA has recently updated its website but a previous version (cached here) contained the following description of "romantic fiction":

What is romantic fiction?

Romantic fiction is the cross-genre genre. In the UK it appears under a variety of publishers’ labels including general fiction, women’s fiction, historical, romantic comedy, chick lit, sagas – even spooky – as well as romance. These are among the UK’s most commercially successful book categories.

It embraces Jilly Cooper’s 900 pages as well as the 187 of Harlequin Mills & Boon’s category romances which are published every month; multi-generational sagas and Regency romps; deeply serious meditations on life and flippant twenty–somethings’ metropolitan shenanigans.

The engine of romantic fiction is love and relationships. The bodywork is infinitely variable.

Romantic fiction’s heritage

The first modern novel in English (‘Pamela’ by Samuel Richardson, published 1740) was essentially a romance, a highly coloured tussle between love and virtue. (Both won.) First Fanny Burney, then Jane Austen honed the genre, leading their heroines through agonising mistakes to emotional understanding and a happy ending. The Brontë sisters added social isolation, madness and tragedy; Thackeray gave us the truly amoral heroine in Becky Sharpe. The modern genre was born.

Phil would "like to argue that the Romance genre is stigmatised undeservedly because of the imperative for a happy ending" but the UK's Romantic Novelists' Association was founded "in 1960 by a roll call of notables in women’s commercial fiction" because

They wanted respect for their genre. In her inaugural address, Miss Robins said that although romantic novels, according to the libraries, gave the most pleasure to the most people, the writers almost had to apologise for what they did.

And yet,

even in the sixties, not all RNA novels ended Happy Ever After. RNA Committee member Maynah Lewis ascribed this to women’s widening horizons. Winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year in 1968 and 1972, she said, “In my first novel the heroine didn’t get her man, in my second the heroine was 64 years old, my third was a romantic suspense set behind the Iron Curtain, my fourth had no wedding bells, not even in the far distance.”

So while I think Phil raises some very interesting questions about the effects of the "imperative for a happy ending" in the romance genre, I'm not sure it's necessarily that imperative which is the cause of all of the stigma (though it may well be the cause of some of it). After all, romantic fiction is, and long has been, to quote Phil, "able to embrace the love plot, tragic or otherwise" and yet many authors of romantic fiction still felt so stigmatised that they founded the RNA.

PCA Romance Panel 10: The Construction of Gender: (Killer) Heroes and Heroines

Jessica's notes on this panel are available here and describe papers by Darcy Martin, Jim and Margaret Haefner, Jacob Lusk and Marnie Jones.

PCA Romance Panel 9: So Classy!: High/Low/Middle Class/Culture

Jessica's notes for Panel 9 are now available. The papers were presented by Conseula Francis, Tamara Whyte, and Angela Toscano.

PCA Romance Panel 8: Exploring History, Genre, Media

The panelists were Maryan Wherry, Jill Astley, Toni Johnson-Woods, and Kimberley Baldus. Jessica's notes are available here.

Just so that we're absolutely clear about their status, Jessica introduces this set by stating that

Following are some of my fallible, incomplete, impressionistic notes from a Romance Area panel session at the PCA conference in St. Louis. These are notes on works in progress,and do not purport to be complete records of the papers presented. Please follow up with individual presenters for full copies of their papers or to have specific questions about their work addressed.

In the light of that disclaimer, those of you who read Jessica's notes on An Goris's paper about Nora Roberts, in Session 3, but who haven't kept up with the comments thread here at TMT, might like to know that An felt the "summary might have (understandably) lacked some of the nuance I hope I put into the paper" and she has therefore provided some "some clarification and additions."

PCA Romance Panel 7: Romancing Vampires: Toothsome Heroes and Happy Endings

On this panel were Haley Stokes, Brent Gibson and Kat Schroeder. Jessica has "disabled comments on this post deliberately."

PCA Romance Panel 6: Romance Publishing: Canadian Romance, ePublishing, and Erotica, Oh My!

And Jessica's notes for this panel are also up. On the panel are Crystal Goldman, Jessica Taylor, and authors Amanda Berry, Jeannie Lin, and Sela Carsen.

PCA Romance Panel 5: The Safe Spaces of Romance: Smart Bitches, Dear Author and a New Romance Documentary

Jessica's put up notes for this panel now. Jane Litte refers to two blog posts. The first is this one by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, and the second is this one, by Laura Clawson at Daily Kos. The other papers are by Pamela Regis and Laurie Kahn.

Edited to add: Jane Litte has also put up a detailed post about this panel.

PCA Romance Panel 3: Nora Roberts: Food, Community, and Voice

Jessica's notes about this session are now available. The presenters were Tessa Kostelc, Glinda Hall, and An Goris.

Jessica's notes about An's paper mention the

Connected book format –which had been new in early 1990s, shift in genre and its publication practices

Genre of romance seems at first resistant to connected series, since each novel has a definitive ending [...] Roberts’ first use of connected books format was in 1985, 4 books about MacGregor siblings for Silhouette.

In fact, Mills & Boon had already published Mary Burchell's Warrender series, which began in 1965 with A Song Begins. Connected romances can also be found in the oeuvre of Georgette Heyer who is, of course, a highly influential figure in the genre and one of whom Nora Roberts is very well aware: Roberts has written that "Georgette Heyer has given me such great pleasure over the years in my reading, and rereading, of her stories. [...] I have Georgette Heyer's books in every room of my house." (i). As mentioned at Georgette-Heyer.com

Although Heyer didn't really write 'series', there are a few books that are linked by common characters. These are These Old Shades [1926] with Léonie and Justin parenting Dominic in Devil's Cub [1932] and Dominic and Mary are the grand-parents of Barbara in An Infamous Army [1937]. [...] In addition, the characters from Regency Buck [1935] are also featured in An Infamous Army. [...] her first novel, The Black Moth [1921] was revisited in These Old Shades. As Hodge says in the bio, "Devil Andover from The Black Moth has suffered a sea change into the wicked Duke of Avon (known as Satanas to his friends)."

An Infamous Army thus creates a cross-over between the books about two separate families.

Jessica added that "Sarah Frantz asks the first question, noting that it was in fact Sam and Alyssa, Suzanne Brockman’s characters, who first began their courtship in a book in which they don’t have their HEA." This made me think of Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire and Palliser novels. They're not strictly romances, but they do contain plenty of romance elements because Trollope apparently believed that "a novel can hardly be made interesting or successful without love" (Polhemus 383). Trollope's two series do eventually cross over, and in Phineas Finn in the Palliser series we can find Phineas beginning a romantic relationship that eventually concludes in Phineas Redux.

Can anyone else think of more examples of

• early romance series
• cross-overs between series
• characters whose courtships begin in one book in a series and end in a later one?

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• Polhemus, Robert M. "Being in Love in Phineas Finn/Phineas Redux: Desire, Devotion, Consolation." Nineteenth-Century Fiction 37.3 (1982): 383-395.
• Roberts, Nora. Foreword. Frederica. By Georgette Heyer. Don Mills, Ontario: Harlequin, 2000. i-iv.
  

PCA Romance Panel 2: The Dark Side of Romance: Rape, Serial Killers, and Power Dynamics

Jessica continues with her summaries, this time of papers by Robin Harders, Sarah S. G. Frantz, Amber Botts, and James Buchanan.

Edited to add: James Buchanan has made available the slides which accompanied her presentation. They're probably not safe for viewing at some people's work-places. I know that's an issue for some people, so I thought I'd better mention it.

PCA Romance Panel 1: Romancing Bollywood

Jessica's first summary from this year's PCA conference, of papers by Eric Selinger, Jayashree Kamble, and Pavitra Sundar, is now up.

Tweeting PCA 2010

If you'd like to follow Sarah Frantz's tweets about the conference, please go to http://twitter.com/academicromance. You don't have to have a Twitter account to read the tweets. You can subscribe via RSS to your feed reader or there's the option of doing things the "old-fashioned" way i.e. just keep checking the page to see Sarah's latest tweets. The conference starts today, Wednesday 31 March, but Sarah says she'll start "tweeting on Thursday from the first Romance Area panel." I posted a list of the romance panels here (scroll down the page a little till you reach them).

To Blog, or Not To Blog: That is the Question

Laura Vivanco

Jessica at Read, React, Review will be attending the 2010 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, and she's been thinking about blogging about the papers. However, last year when she did this she "ran into a few 'issues' so this year she's asking for some advice in advance of the conference.

Could blogging about conference presentations cause harm? [...]

1. Maybe someone reading this blog will scoop the presenter’s WIP, stealing her thesis and getting an article into print first. The presenter loses a publication and time spent on research. This could affect her chances for getting tenure (this would not be an issue for presenters who are presenting published or forthcoming work, of course).

2. Blog commenters are harshly critical of the presenter, in a way no one in an academic audience would be. They write things like, “That is just stupid” or “What a dumbass!”. It is hurtful to the presenter — not a reaction she was prepared for, and she worries it will devalue her work if it is the first thing that shows up in a Google search.

3. It is not the presenter’s best work. In fact, it is really not ready for prime time. She hates the idea that it is online for posterity, when she plans to radically alter or abandon the research post conference.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I blogged about the papers at this year's conference on Georgette Heyer, so Jessica's list of problems made me feel a bit worried. Did I do the wrong thing? Well, as far as 3. is concerned, the presenters may feel that way about their work but if they did, they didn't mention it to me. I contacted all of them either prior to, or just after, I published the posts so that they could offer corrections/objections. Problem 2. wasn't an issue here, and as for Problem 3., I may be wrong about this but I would have thought that blog posts of this kind make stealing less likely, since the author's name is attached to the summary of the work and provides an online record of the date on which she presented it.

My intention was to share some of the enthusiasm of the day, show what a vibrant area of study this is, and whet people's appetites for the full papers when/if they're published (the hope is that at least some of them will appear in a future issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, and I've heard that Jennifer Kloester's biography of Heyer will be published sometime next year). Jessica has come up with a few other reasons in favour of blogging about conferences:

Are there any ethical arguments in favor of blogging the conference? I tend to be skeptical about this in terms of my little blog, but here goes. Possibly the goods of disseminating information, and any ancillary goods that come from that, like contacts being made (someone reads this blog, finds out Julie Juniper is working on her topic, they get in touch, they collaborate or develop some other mutually beneficial exchange), or academics who were not able to attend the conference (maybe they were ill or couldn’t afford it) getting to stay updated in their field a bit, or nonacademics, i.e. most readers of RRR, benefiting by getting a glimpse into a different way of approaching their favorite books, and enjoying this or learning from it.

Personally, and perhaps very selfishly, I hope that Jessica does choose to blog about the PCA/ACA conference because I won't be there. Take a look at the following list of the romance-related sessions taken from the Conference program and see if you feel the same way!

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Romance I: Romancing Bollywood
Session Chair: Eric Murphy Selinger, DePaul University

"'My Heart It Speaks a Thousand Words': Language, Race, and Romance in
Bollywood Cinema"‖ Pavitra Sundar, Dartmouth University

"Found in Translation: Hindi Cinema‘s Take on Romance in English Language
Film"‖ Jayashree Kamble, University of Minnesota

"Cinematic Time and the Fate of the Family in Classical Hindi Cinema"‖ Anustup Basu, University of Illinois

"Reading Bollywood Reading Romance: Jaane Tu Janne Na"‖ Eric Murphy Selinger

Romance II: The Dark Side of Romance: Rape, Serial Killers, and Power Dynamics
Session Chair: Sarah S. G. Frantz, Fayetteville State University

"Romancing the Rapist: The Myriad Uses of Sexual Force and Violence in Genre Romance"‖ Robin Harders, University of California, Irvine

"Alpha Male: Dominance, Submission, and Masculinity in Popular Romance Fiction"‖ Sarah S. G. Frantz

"Serial Killers Make Great Boyfriends?: Dexter and Dark Heroes"‖ Amber Botts, Neodesha High School

"Reality v. Writing: Walking the Tightrope of Reader Expectations, Personal Knowledge and Romance Tropes"‖ James Buchanan, Romance Author

Romance III: Nora Roberts: Food, Community, and Voice
Session Chair: An Goris, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/DePaul University

"Recipes and Rituals: Food and Religion in Nora Roberts' Three Sisters Island Trilogy"‖ Tessa Kostelc, The George Washington University

"Lights, Audiobooks, Action!: The Recreation of Narrative Voice in Nora Roberts's The Circle Trilogy"‖ Glinda Hall, University of Arkansas

"Let's Keep It in the Family: Nora Roberts' Connected Books"‖ An Goris

Romance Area Meeting
American Center, Room 242 (2nd Floor)
Thursday, April 1, 5:00 P.M.
Chair: Sarah Frantz, University of North Carolina, Fayetteville, and Darcy Martin, East Tennessee State University
Open discussion about the current state of romance studies, including: the progress of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, IASPR's conference in Belgium in August 2010, the planned Popular Romance Studies Special Issue of the Journal of American Culture in 2013, and preliminary planning of IASPR's 2011 conference in New York City before the RWA annual conference. The meeting is open to all presenters and anyone interested in our area. Please join us and then join us for a Romance Area Dinner at a local restaurant afterwards.

Romance IV: Theory, Criticism, and Ethics
Session Chair: Jessica Miller, University of Maine

"Truly Our Contemporary Jane Austen: Popular Historical Romance and the Uses of Author(ity)"‖ Susan Kroeg, Eastern Kentucky University

"Building an Ethical Review Community: Dear Author"‖ Jane Litte, Blogger: Dear Author

"Love as the Practice of Bondage: Popular Romance Narrative and the Conundrum of Erotic Love"‖ Catherine Roach, University of Alabama

"Ethical Criticism of Genre Fiction: The Case of Romance"‖ Jessica Miller

Romance: Romance V: The Safe Spaces of Romance
Session Chair: Pamela Regis, McDaniel College

"Reading the Romance Now: Intersections of Gender, Genre, and Literacy"‖ Stephanie Moody, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

"Growing Intentional Communities: The Popular Romance Project"‖ Laurie Kahn, Brandeis University

"The Romance Community: A Room of One's Own and Écriture Feminine"‖ Pamela Regis

Romance VI: Romance Publishing: Canadian Romance, ePublishing, and Erotica, Oh My!
Session Chair: Crystal Goldman, San Jose State University

"'Can I set it in Canada?': CanLit and Romance Publishing"‖ Jessica Taylor, University of Toronto

"Romance Rebound: Further Comparisons in e-Publishing and Print Publishers by Erotica and Erotic Romance Authors"‖ Crystal Goldman

"Author Discussion: Print and Digital Publishing"‖ Amanda Freeman, Harlequin; Jeannie Lin, Harlequin Historical; Sela Carsen, Samhain Publishing

Romance VII: Romancing Vampires: Toothsome Heroes and Happy Endings
Session Chair: Sarah S. G. Frantz, Fayetteville State University

"Sexual Exchange and Submission in Dracula: A Precursor to Gay Erotica Romance"‖ Haley Stokes

"Taking a Bite Out of Love: Transforming Romance in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga"‖ Jessica Lyn Van Slooten, University of Wisconsin, Manitowoc

"Twilight and Romeo And Juliet: The Portrayal of Love and Narrative Perspective"‖ Brent Gibson, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

"Sheep in Wolf's Clothing: Christine Feehan's Carpathian Heroes"‖ Kat Schroeder, University of Washington

Romance VIII: Exploring History, Genre, Media
Session Chair: Darcy Martin, East Tennessee State University

"American Roots of the Popular Romance Novel: Sentimental, Domestic, and Dime Novels"‖ Maryan Wherry, Black Hawk College

"Comparison of Romance Videogames to other Romance Media"‖ Jill Astley

"Crikey, It's Romance for Men: Australian Sports Novels and Westerns of the 1950s‖ Toni Johnson-Woods, University of Queensland, Australia

"Discovering Liminal Spaces: Gossip and Self-Exposure in Jennifer Crusie's Romances and Eighteenth-Century Amatory Fiction"‖ Kimberly Baldus, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Romance IX: So Classy!: High/Low/Middle Class/Culture
Session Chair: Sarah S. G. Frantz, Fayetteville State University

"Something New: Resisting the Coupling Convention in Contemporary Black Romantic Film"‖ Consuela Francis, College of Charleston

"Global Popular Culture and Class in Filipino Chick Lit‖ Trina Joyce Sajo, Brock University

"She quoted Shakespeare!: The inclusion of highbrow literature in popular romance novels"‖
Tamara Whyte, University of Alabama

Romance X: The Construction of Gender: (Killer) Heroes and Heroines
Session Chair: Darcy Martin, East Tennessee State University

"From Virgins to Rogues: Iris Johansen's Ten-year Love Affair with Loveswept‖ Darcy Martin, East Tennessee State University

"Neither True Nor Fair: An Exploration of Female Heroism in Popular Romance"‖
Angela Toscano, University of Utah

"Readers' Perceptions of Realism, Race, and Gender in Brockmann's Contemporary Romance Novels‖ Jim Haefner, University of St. Francis; Margaret Haefner, North Park University

"Wicked Symmetry: The Dangerous Compulsion of Attraction in Twilight and Ziska"‖ Jacob Lusk, University of North Florida; Marnie Jones, University of North Florida

The Vampire in Literature, Culture, & Film: Roundtable—Blood, Sex, and Love: Exploring Vampire Romance Novels and Their Impact on the Image of the Vampire
Moderator: Amanda Hobson, Ohio University
Panelists:
Jessica Miller, University of Maine
Heide Crawford, University of Kansas
Bloodsucking fiends no longer. While there is not a single, monolithic vision of the vampire, the predominant pop culture image of the vampire has morphed from the unapologetic horror figure with gleaming fangs waiting to drain your blood to the sexy sympathetic and tortured soul that would rather sweep you off your feet than hurt you. Vampire myth, folklore, and fiction have integrated romance and sexuality as core elements from the beginning. The sympathetic vampire has existed within the folklore along with the more horrific, but this apologetic vampire has found a massive following in the last decade, especially as romance novelists have begun major incorporation of the vampire into their novels. Authors in other genres have also integrated this more sympathetic and charming vampire. These novels utilize a belief that vampires are neither good nor evil but can be either or both, as they inhabit the grey area. A few series stand out as indicative of this current trend, such as The Black Dagger Brotherhood series, The Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, the Twilight Saga, and the Southern Vampire series (a.k.a. the Sookie Stackhouse series or True Blood). These series have demonstrated the evolution of the vampire's use of sex and romance to lure prey to a desire for companionship. This roundtable will offer a venue to discuss this phenomenon of the vampire romance, including an exploration of the following questions: have these romantic vampires defanged the traditional vampire, are these vampires indicative of the larger vampire narratives particularly beginning in the nineteenth century, and why the romance genre has embraced the vampire lover?

Romance XI: Happily Ever After: Romance Conventions In and Through Film and Fiction
Session Chair: Darcy Martin, East Tennessee State University

"Revisiting Medium and Message in Romantic Fictions: Character-motivated Happily Ever Afters"‖ Danielle Rubin; Sabrina Darby

"Is my Chemise Showing?: Playing with Cross-Dressing Conventions in Celeste Bradley's The Spy"‖ Mallory Jagodzinsky, Bowling Green State University

"Is Happily Ever After a Romance Imperative?"‖ Phil Mathews, Bournemouth University

"Comedy and Tragedy: Redemptive Happy Endings"‖ Barbara Samuel, Romance Author

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So, have you got any advice (of a non-selfish variety) to offer Jessica?

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Taken on the 28th of July, 1922, the photo is from the National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress) at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. It is available online and there are "No known restrictions on publication." I found it via Wikimedia Commons.

Popular Culture Association Romance Area Call for Papers!

It's that time of year again! The Popular Culture Association is gearing up for its annual conference, this time in St. Louis, MO, March 31-April 3, 2010.

The Call For Papers for the Romance Area is changed this year. We're not just looking for Romance Fiction--we're looking for discussions of ANY representations of romance in popular culture, anywhere, anywhen, any media, any genre.

The official CFP:

PCA/ACA 2010 National Conference
St. Louis, Missouri, March 31 - April 3, 2010
Call For Papers: Romance Area

Conference info

Deadline for submission: November 30, 2009


We are interested in any and all topics about or related to popular romance: all genres, all media, all countries, all kinds, and all eras. All representations of romance in popular culture (fiction, stage, screen—large or small, commercial, advertising, music, song, dance, online, real life, etc.), from anywhere and anywhen, are welcome topics of discussion.

We are considering proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.

If you are involved in the creative industry of popular romance (romance author/editor, film director/producer, singer/songwriter, etc.) and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the representations of popular romance, please contact us!

Some possible topics (although we are by no means limited to these):

• Popular Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation, Western and non-Western media, local and comparative approaches)
• Romance Across the Media: crossover texts and the relationships between romance fiction and romantic films, music, art, drama, etc.; also the paratexts and contexts of popular romance
• Romance High and Low: texts that fall between “high” and “low” culture, or that complicate the distinctions between these critical categories
• Romance Then and Now: representations of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern love
• Romancing the Marketplace: romantic love in advertising, marketing, and consumer culture
• Queering the Romance: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender romance, and representations of same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts
• BDSM Romance and representations of romantic/erotic power exchange
• Romance communities
• New Critical Approaches, such as readings informed by critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial studies, or empirical science (e.g., the neurobiology of love)
• The Politics of Romance, and romantic love in political discourse (revolutionary, reactionary, colonial / anti-colonial, etc.)
• Individual Creative Producers or Texts of Popular Romance (novels, authors, film, directors, writers, songwriters, actors, composers, dancers, etc.)
• Gender-Bending and Gender-Crossing / Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing / Media-Bending and Media-Crossing Popular Romance
• African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
• Young Adult Romance
• History of/in Popular Romance
• Romance and Region: places, histories, mythologies, traditions
• Definitions and Theoretical Models of Popular Romance: it’s not all just happily ever after

As we did for the past two years, the Romance area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field of Popular Romance Studies. Of particular interest this year: the new International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) with its affiliated annual conferences and scholarly publication, Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS).

Presenters are encouraged to make use of the new array of romance scholarship resources online, including the romance bibliography, the RomanceScholar listserv and the open Forums at the webpage of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.

Submit a one-page (200-300 words) proposal or abstract (via regular mail or e-mail) by November 30, 2009, to the Area Chairs in Romance:

Sarah S. G. Frantz
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Fayetteville State University
1200 Murchison Road
Fayetteville, NC 28301
(910) 672-1438
sarahfrantz@gmail.com

Darcy Martin
Women's Studies
East Tennessee State University
P.O. Box 70571
Johnson City, TN 37614
(423) 439-6311
martindj@etsu.edu

If you have any questions as all, please contact one or both of the area chairs. Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.