Links and New Publications: Politics, Pakistan, Empire, Race, Tourism

From The Guardian (via Jodi McAlister):

Over the last four years, many in the romance community, sometimes known as romancelandia, have thrown themselves into activism. Fated Mates, the podcast that compelled Lee to run for office, operates a phone-banking campaign called Fated States, which has logged more than 900,000 calls in support of Democratic candidates and causes since 2020. Separately, a group of authors who write under the names Alyssa Cole, Kit Rocha and Courtney Milan started an organization called Romancing the Vote, which has since 2020 raised more than $1m for voting rights groups.[...]

many popular romance writers today – such as Casey McQuiston, Alexis Hall and Helen Hoang, to name just a few – take a more progressive view of gender roles, portraying marriage and babies as options rather than necessities. Between 2022 and 2023, booksellers also sold more than 1m LGBTQ+ romance novels – a 40% spike over the previous year, according to Circana.  [...]

Novels by Sarah J Maas, who writes bestselling “romantasy” novels, are among the most-banned books in the US. Schools have also banned books by McQuiston and Hall, as well as those by popular romance writers like Ali Hazelwood, Emily Henry and Colleen Hoover.

From Javaria Farooqui:

 

🎙️ Ever wondered about reader-fans in Pakistan? Here is a link for my chat with Dr Priyam Sinha about the fascinating world of Regency romance book clubs in South Asia! https://newbooksnetwork.com/romance-fandom-in-21st-century-pakistan

 

[Edited to add: Javaria later clarified "romance reading communities, not book clubs."] 

 

And on to the new publications:

Gopalakrishnan, Manasi (2024). "Nostalgia for the Empire: British nationalism in the spatial representation of colonial India in contemporary romantic novels." NEGOTIATIONS: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 6.1: 100-108.

 

Moussaoui, Abdelghani and Abdellah Benlamine (2024). "Gender, Identity, and the Politics of Difference in Popular Romance." Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 8.3:78-89.

 

Moussaoui, Abdelghani and Abdellah Benlamine (2024). "Race as a 'Sign of Difference' in Romance Discourse." Journal of Applied Language and Culture Studies 7.2:114-128. 

Pérez-Gil, María del Mar (2025). "Tourists not welcome: perceptions of tourism in popular romance novels." Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change. https://doi.org/10.1080/14766825.2024.2448189

Simón Brumos, Ana (2024). Jane Austen’s Influence on Contemporary Romance Novels Honours Dissertation, Universidad de Zaragoza.

Zaini, Ahmad Zuhdi (2024). Personality structure of the main character Reid Buchanan in Susan Mallery's Sizzling. Undergraduate, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim.

New Publications: Comics, Second Hand Bookshops, Islands, Hispanisms, Race, Young People, Fatness, Radway and Chinese Readers

Brunet, Peyton and Blair Davis (2022). Comic Book Women: Characters, Creators, and Culture in the Golden Age. Austin: University of Texas Press. [Chapter 8 is about romance comics: https://doi.org/10.7560/324110-010]

Farooqui, Javaria (2022). "Romance in an Old Bookshop." The Bridge Magazine 1:66-69. [This is available freely online. It discusses the distribution of second-hand romances in Pakistan and the connection with social class.]

Fresno-Calleja, Paloma (2022). “Repurposing Fantasy Island: Lani Wendt Young’s Telesā Series and the Politics of Postcolonial Romance.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2054011

González-Cruz, María-Isabel. 2022. Hispanicisms in Romance Fiction. An Annotated Glossary. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. [Details from the publisher.]

Hendricks, Margo (2022). Race and Romance: Coloring the Past. Arizona State University. [This is available to read for free online. This includes discussion of two novels by Beverly Jenkins and also Margo Hendricks's own romance novels (written as Elysabeth Grace).]

Herrera, Carolina M. (2022). Examining the relation between media engagement and developmental outcomes in adolescents and emerging adults: an exploration of engagement with and impact of young adult literature media among youth. PhD thesis, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. [Discusses romance reading.]

McDavis-Conway, Shana (2022). “Self-conscious, unapologetic, and straight: fat protagonists in romantic fiction.” Fat Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2022.2047337

Stetson, Suzanne (2022). "Reconciling Reader Response and Feminism in Late Twentieth-Century Erotic Historical Romances." INCITE: Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 13.

Tang, Ning (2022). "Reading Online Romance Novels Is Related To Chinese Readers' View of Love." Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Science 5.2:32-45.

New Publications: an around the world edition

Farooqui, Javaria (2022). "Romance, Austen, and English-Medium Schooling in Pakistan " Language, Education, and Identity: Medium in South Asia. Ed. Chaise LaDousa, Christina P. Davis. Routledge. [Excerpt available via Google Books.]

Izharuddin, Alicia (2021). “Reading the Digital Muslim Romance.” CyberOrient 15.1: 146-171.

Kołodziej, Gaja (2021). "Unforgettably in love: uses of the amnesia trope in contemporary romance." PhD thesis in creative writing, Massey University. [Embargoed until 2023 but the abstract is available.]

Leetsch, Jennifer (2021). Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing: Making Love, Making Worlds. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. [See the chapter on "Routes of Desire: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie" (details here).]

Long, Eileen M. (2021). Modern Love: Reading, Writing, and Publishing the Romance Novel. Master's Thesis, Purdue University.

Mäkelä, Veera (2021). "Reading Response in Mary Balogh: A Critical Engagement." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 10.

Ngoshi, Hazel Tafadzwa (2021). "Repression, Literary Dissent and the Paradox of Censorship in Zimbabwe." Journal of Southern African Studies. Online first. [Abstract and excerpt here.]

Sinha, Mona (2022). "Reading Mills and Boon in India From the Post-Colonial to the Millennial Experience." Indian Popular Fiction: Redefining the Canon, ed. Gitanjali Chawla and Sangeeta Mittal. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Sujaya, I. M., Suarka, I. N., & Sudewa, I. K. (2021). "Representation of Balinese Exoticism: Analysis of Inter-ethnic Relations Novels in Pre-independence Period." The International Journal of Language and Cultural (TIJOLAC), 3(2), 46–56.

Zibrak, Arielle (2021). Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures. New York: New York University Press. [The first chapter is about bodice-rippers, shame/guilt and "the dark hero." Excerpt available via Google Books.]

New to the Romance Wiki Bibliography: Gothic Romances, Heyer, Medical Women, Pakistan, Sexuality, Spain, The Sheik

Ali, Abu-Bakar, 2018. 

"Agency, Gender, Nationalism, and the Romantic Imaginary in Pakistan", Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing. Ed. Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 225-235. Abstract

Arnold-Forster, Agnes and Alison Moulds. 

"Medical women in popular fiction", The BMJ Opinion, September 26, 2018. [Includes details about Mona Maclean, Medical Student (1892), a medical romance written by one of the earliest "registered female practitioners"]

Drakulić-Ilić, Slavenka. 1984. 

“Zašto žene vole bajke?” [“Why do women like fairy tales?”], Smrtni grijesi feminizma. Ogledi u mudologiji [Mortal Sins of Feminism. Essays on Testicology]. Zagreb: Znanje, 1984. 33-45. The article was first published on the pages of Start, no. 299. 3 July 1980. [Details from Lóránd Zsófia's dissertation, "“Learning a Feminist Language”: The Intellectual History of Feminism in Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s", Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, 2014, in which it is stated that "In the essay “Why do women like fairy tales?” Drakulić argues that despite their simplicity, trivial romance novels mean an escape from the everyday reality of state socialism." (208-209) and "examines the popularity of trivial romances (in Serbo-Croatian: herz-roman) available at the newsstands and also published in women’s magazines as a series. She sees “erotic” men’s magazines as a counterpart to the cheap romantic stories, as both started to flourish on the market as a result of the “sexual revolution” [...] and both use traditional and stereotypical images of women, which do not exclude, but complement each other (36). It shows both the double-faced nature of the sexual revolution and the consistency in the logic of patriarchy. Drakulić describes the basic plot of the romance novels and how they present clichés of femininity and masculinity, romantic love and happy marriage (35). Despite their triviality, Drakulić emphasises their social relevance: only one title, Život [Life] was sold in 3.600.000 copies in 1978 (34). There is a demand for the genre, what cannot be left out of consideration, even if there was not domestic, Yugoslav production of these, those available were mostly imported from Western, English-speaking countries. Besides the presentation of traditional gender roles, a regular objection against the trivial romances is their low literary quality: the media should inform and educate, and one’s free time should be used creatively [...]. Drakulić analyses an unpublished survey by the publisher Vjesnik on the readers’ habits and remarks of reading trivial romances. All in all, the conclusion is that the majority of the readers are overburdened women who do not have either time or strength to read anything more complexly written, whereas they do notice the poor literary quality of the novels. These readers, adds Drakulić, lack real relationships and love – exactly the dream, the “fairy tale” offered by these booklets. Drakulić claims that simply “by abolishing and stigmatising this kind of a press, we do not abolish the demand/need” of women in Yugoslavia (44)." (232-33)]

 

Paige, Lori A., 2018. 

The Gothic Romance Wave: A Critical History of the Mass Market Novels, 1960-1993. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2018. Excerpt

 

Pérez-Gil, María del Mar, 2018. 

"Representations of Nation and Spanish Masculinity in Popular Romance Novels: The Alpha Male as “Other”", The Journal of Men’s Studies. Online First September 23, 2018. Abstract

Suwanban, Pauline, 2018. 

"From Exhalation to Transformation: The Female Body in the Orientalist Romance". Dandelion: Postgraduate Arts Journal & Research Network 9.1 Abstract and link to pdf

 

Wei, Po-Yu, Rick, 2018. 

‘“She is a Jade”: A Georgian Gaming Woman Re-imagined in Georgette Heyer’s Faro’s Daughter’, Crossings 9: 122-131.

New to the Wiki: Death, Monsters, Migrations, Du Maurier and more

Here are the new entries, recently added by Christina Martinez and me.

Leonzini, Alexandra, 2018. 

‘“All the Better to Eat You With”: The Eroticization of the Werewolf and the Rise of Monster Porn in the Digital Age.’ Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture. Ed. Ina Batzke, Eric C. Erbacher, Linda M. Heß, Corinna Lenhardt. Bielefeld: transcript. 269-294. [“Starting her analysis with 19th-century horror fiction before moving to 20th-century films and 21-century romance and erotic literature, Leonzini traces the changes in the construction of the gendered and sexualized body of the figure of the werewolf” (12) and there is therefore quite a lot of reference to romance, which is deemed to have laid the groundwork for modern monster porn. Excerpt.]

Lowery, Karalyne, 2018. 

"The Militarized Shapeshifter: Authorized Violence and Military Connections as an Antidote to Monstrosity." University of Toronto Quarterly 87.1: 196-213. Abstract.

O'Mahony, Lauren. 2017. 

"Death and the Australian Rural Romance Novel." TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, vol. (Supplement 45), Oct. 2017, pp. 1-14. [Full text]

 

Salvador Miguel, Nicasio, 1995. 

¿Hay precedentes de la novela rosa? Letras de la España contemporánea. Homenaje a José Luis Varela, ed. N. Salvador Miguel (Alcalá de Henares: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos): 319-327. [Full text]

Suman [Sigroha], 2018. 

"Gendered Migrations and Literary Narratives: Writing Communities in South Asian Diaspora." Millennial Asia 9.1: 93-108.[Full text] [On "educated skilled women from South Asia who migrate as ‘trailing spouses’" and turn to romance-writing as an alternative, portable career.]

Turner, Katherine. 2017. 

"Daphne Du Maurier's Mary Anne: Rewriting the Regency Romance as Feminist History." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 54-77. [Abstract]

Vitackova, Martina, 2018. 

"Representation of racial and sexual ‘others’ in Afrikaans popular romantic fiction by Sophia Kapp." Tydskrif vir letterkunde 55.1. 122-133. Abstract and link to pdf