Romance News Roundup: PhD opportunity, conference report, disability project, diversity at risk, new publications

There's a PhD opportunity at the University of Tasmania:

Popular Fiction in the Twenty-First Century

This scholarship provides $26,682pa (2017 rate) living allowance for 3 years, with a possible 6 month extension.

Popular fiction is the most significant growth area in trade publishing in the twenty-first century. This project is premised on the view that popular or genre fiction is a sector of the publishing industry, a social and cultural formation, and a body of texts. It will offer new insights into contemporary literary culture through systematic investigation of the contemporary significance of one or more popular genres (crime, thrillers, romance, or fantasy) in the twenty-first century. By employing a mixed methodology combining discourse and textual analysis, quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and/or creative writing, Popular Fiction in the 21st Century aims to contribute to the increasingly urgent demand for conceptual and methodological frameworks for studying genre fiction.

More details here.

If you don't follow the Pink Heart Society blog, you might want to take a look at Amy Burge's report on the 2017 PCA/ACA conference. Ria Cheyne's there too, introducing her Disability and Romance Project, which recently gained funding from the RWA.

Unfortunately there's bad news as well as good in the romance world and

Romance Writers of America is saddened by the news that Harlequin will be ending publication of five of their series lines in 2018.

According to an announcement RWA received, the following lines will close: Harlequin Western (June 2018), Harlequin Superromance (June 2018), Love Inspired Historical (June 2018), Harlequin Nocturne (December 2018), and Kimani Romance (December 2018).

More details here. As pointed out by Kay Taylor Rea,

this news is a huge blow to the romance community for a very big reason: Harlequin is closing Kimani Romance.

Why is this a big deal? The vast majority of Harlequin titles penned by black women are published as Kimani titles. The Kimani Romance line is described as stories featuring ‘sophisticated, soulful and sensual African-American and multicultural heroes and heroines who develop fulfilling relationships as they lead lives full of drama, glamour and passion.’ These titles cover a number of subgenres, so hopefully Harlequin will make a concerted effort to integrate existing series and current authors into other lines. 

I’ll be keeping an eye out for official word from Harlequin and will certainly be watching how the Kimani authors are treated. This could be a huge setback for diversity in romance.

More details here.

And, finally, the latest publications to be added to the Romance Wiki:

Gardner, Jeanne. 2011. 

"'True-To-Life': Romance Comics and Teen-Age Desire, 1947-1954." Forum for World Literature Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, Apr. 2011, pp. 118-128. 

Kamble, Jayashree, 2017. 

"From Barbarized to Disneyfied: Viewing 1990s New York City Through Eve Dallas, J.D. Robb’s Futuristic Homicide Detective." Forum for Interamerican Research 10.1 (May 2017): 72-86.[Available free and in full online.]

 

Zhou, Yanyan, Bryant Paul and Ryland Sherman, 2017. 

"Still a Hetero-Gendered World: A Content Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Romantic Ideals in Chinese Boy Love Stories." Sex Roles. Abstract

Links: Me in Sheffield, New Work, Conference Reminder

Laura Vivanco

Last weekend I went to Sheffield to be part of a panel discussing "Why Read Harlequin Mills & Boon Romances?" with senior editor Flo Nicoll, romance authors Heidi Rice and Susan Stephens and fellow academics Amy Burge, Val Derbyshire and Fiona Martinez. I've written up a post about the event here and Fiona's observations are here.

New to the Romance Wiki Bibliography:

Gates, Sarah, 2016. 

"Feminism, NASCAR and the Italian billionaire's secret baby: Defending the romance genre." Voiceworks 103 (Autumn): 95-101.

Sarah's a romance author and her website's here. Abstract:

Romance novels are widely considered frivolous, trashy and vacuous. They aren't reviewed in mainstream publications like the New York Times Book Review, nominated for literary awards, or well represented at literary festivals. They have been called 'mummy porn'. When I tell people that I write romance, I get raised eyebrows and the topic is quickly shifted - like I've confessed to something embarrassing or shameful. Because when you admit to reading romance, the most common question is 'How can you read that crap?'

Conference Reminder:

Jodi McAlister writes:

The call for papers deadline for PCA in San Diego in April next year is fast approaching! Heather and I would love to continue Eric's work and make this a really awesome, vibrant, interesting gathering of scholars, so please make sure you get those abstracts/panel proposals/etc in before October 1. http://pcaaca.org/romance/

Events in Australia, England and the US

Laura Vivanco

Why Read Harlequin Mills & Boon Romances?

Place: Sheffield, UK
Date: Saturday 17 and Thursday 22 September
Time: 2-2:30pm (Saturday); 4:45-5:15pm (Thursday)

Val Derbyshire believes the books have genuine literary value. In her lecture, and in the accompanying graphic novel, she has a lot of fun arguing the case. 

More details here. This is part of the Festival of the Mind.

Val's had coverage on the BBC, in The Guardian and The Daily Mail. 

The Genre World of Romance in Twenty-First Century Australia

Place: Room 346, Humanities Building, Sandy Bay Campus, University of Tasmania
Date: 23rd Sep 2016
Time: 1:00-2:00pm

Lisa Fletcher, Beth Driscoll, and Kim Wilkins report on the findings from a project funded by the Romance Writers of America in 2015, which was the first phase of a larger project on Australian popular fiction (funded through an ARC Discovery Grant 2016-2018). Our aim in the first phase was to generate new knowledge about romance in Australia by asking this research question: how do the interactions between romance fiction texts and their national and international writing and publishing communities build and maintain the genre in Australia? We propose the concept of the “genre world” as an analytical tool for examining the relationship between the textual conventions by which we typically define genre and the conventional collective behaviours and activities that govern the production of genre texts.

More details here.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Romance
Conference of the Popular and American Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

12 – 15 April 2017 – San Diego, CA

The topic of romantic love suffuses popular culture. In turn, the popular culture of romantic love shapes real life social practices, from dating to weddings to holiday shopping.  PCA/ACA Romance welcomes any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance, including the following:  art; literature; philosophy; radio; film; television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling.   We are deeply interested in popular romance both within and outside of mainstream popular culture, now or in the past, anywhere in the world.  Scholars, romance writers, romance readers, and any combination of the three are welcome: you do not need to be an academic to be part of the Romance area.

If you wish to organize a roundtable, special session, or a film screening, please contact the Area Chairs.  We have had great success with film screenings for the past several years and would be interested in hosting another one.

As we do every year, 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.  All are welcome to attend.

Submit a proposal or abstract (200-300 words) proposal or abstract through the PCA/ACA website, and ONLY through that website, at conference.pcaaca.org. If you wish to submit a panel for the conference, all presenters must submit individually through the website, and then notify the Area Chairs of your intentions to present together. Please do not include panel colleagues on the electronic submission as this confuses the program. Instructions for submission can be found at https://conference.pcaaca.org/help/conference/submitting-proposals-conference.

Do not simultaneously submit the same proposal to multiple areas. Doing so will result in your proposal being disqualified and your paper being refused by the PCA/ACA. Per PCA/ACA guidelines, a person may present only one paper at the annual meeting, regardless of subject area. If you try to submit to two areas, the master program will not accept your proposals (which may result in your paper not being accepted in either area).

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2016

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

If you have any questions as all, please contact the area chairs:

Dr. Heather Schell                                                    Dr. Jodi McAlister

George Washington University                           University of Tasmania

Washington, DC                                                       Hobart, Australia

schellhm@gwu.edu                                                jodi.mcalister@utas.edu.au