The Romance Wiki's Back - and more online romance conversations

Dr Amy Burge has just announced that "the RomanceWiki is now back online, hosted by the University of Birmingham". You can find it here:

https://romancewiki.bham.ac.uk//index.php/Main_Page 

Amy adds that "As before, the RomanceWiki is open source and collaborative, so all contributors and contributions are welcome."

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A Georgette Heyer "Un-Conference" – February 25^th 2021

2021 sees the centenary of the publication of Georgette Heyer’s first novel, The Black Moth, whose legacy UCL Press is recognising through the February 25th publication of a series of essays –  Georgette Heyer, History and Historical Fiction edited by Dr Samantha Rayner and Professor Kim Wilkins. 

Programme:

Publication Keynote: The Black Moth & Beyond
In Conversation with Biographer Jennifer Kloester & Professor Kim Wilkins

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Guest Keynote: Philippa Gregory In Conversation

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Writing Historical Fiction: What can we Learn from Heyer
with novelists Kate Forsyth & Alison Goodman. Chair: Professor Kim Wilkins

Heyer: The Nonesuch of her Time & the Original Influencer
with authors & Heyer aficionados including Katie Fforde, Lois McMaster Bujold, Harriet Evans, Cathy Rentzenbrink. Chair: Jacks Thomas

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Georgette Heyer, History & Historical Fiction: A volume of essays brought to life with Tom Zille, Vanda Wilcox & Kathleen Jennings. Chair: Dr Samantha Rayner

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Shelf-Healing Podcast: Carriages & Costumes: Regency Replicated & Reimagined hosted by Rebecca Markwick, with guests Zack Pinsent & Amy Bracey

All that information and more can be found here. Tickets cost £10 but Dr. Samantha Rayner tweeted "Please quote heyerfan when booking for free tickets!"

[Edited to add: a query was raised on Twitter with regards to how to do this and the answer is that the place to enter the code is:

on the first page, after you have clicked on 'tickets'. Above 'Georgette Heyer: An Unconference - 25 Feb 2021' you see the words 'enter promo code', click on that, and enter 'heyerfan'

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From Feminism to Orientalism: a Panel of Current Romance Research

On 26 February Pauline Suwanban (Birkbeck, University of London) and Ali Williams (University of Brighton) will be chatting online about their research. 

More details here.

New at JPRS: Special Issue on The Sheik (and a bit about teaching romance in Sweden)

The final additions to issue 9 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies have now gone online and are (as always) freely available to read, both on the website and in downloadable pdf.

• Love in a Cold Climate? Teaching Popular Romance at a Swedish University
  Maria Nilson and Helene Ehriander
   

[Edited to add: JPRS have just added another article to issue 9

• Venetia: Georgette Heyer’s Pastoral Romance
  Anne Lancashire

 That was added on 22 December.]

In the Special Issue on The Sheik are:

Introduction to the special issue on The Sheik
Amy Burge

The Oriental Beast: The Sheik and Fairy Tales
Pauline Suwanban

Garçon manqué: A Queer Rereading (of) The Sheik
Jessica Taylor

Olive Skin Chocolate Eyes: Echoes of The Sheik on Descriptive Patterns of the Italian Romantic Hero in Harlequin Short Contemporaries
Francesca Pierini

Let’s Not Get Carried Away by The Sheik
Laura Vivanco

The Sheik and Modernism
Ellen Turner

The Depiction of Masculinity and Nationality in The Sheik
jay Dixon

In Defence of the Perverse: Reflections on The Sheik (George Melford, 1921)
Elisabetta Girelli

On Eligible Princes: The Medieval Modernity of Sheikh Romance
Amira Jarmakani

Review essay on The Sheik
Amy Burge and Rachel Robinson

On Teaching, Not Teaching, and Teaching The Sheik
Eric Murphy Selinger

Authors on The Sheik: A conversation with Liz Fielding
Elizabeth Cole

Scheduling The Sheik

There was a screening of The Sheik (1921) at the University of Birmingham on Thursday and today's programme is:

Friday 13 September 2019
10-11:15 – Academic panel on The Sheik

• Pauline Suwanban, Beastly Figures: The Sheik and Fairy Tales
• Francesca Pierini, The Legacy of E.M. Hull’s The Sheik on the Depiction of the Italian Romantic Hero in Harlequin Short Contemporaries
• Respondent: Amy Burge
• Chair: Melissa Dickson

Tweet summary by Ali Williams here. To summarise the summary:

Pauline Suwanban is a PhD student at Birkbeck, doing research into orientalist romances. She argues that the hero of The Sheik takes on the 'devil husband figure' that has been popular over the years within popular romantic fiction. She draws parallels between the 'devil husband' and the 'beastly lover' or 'monster husband' character that can be thread through myths and fairytales. Examples include 'Beauty and the Beast'. There lies within the Arabian communities in the novel a 'sinister promise of sexual material pleasure, as well as financial security for women who can tolerate it'.

Francesca Pierini's research is focused on representations of Italian culture in Anglophone literature. Instead of the 'Latin lover', she recommends the term 'Mediterranean men', as she feels that it draws parallels with the way that South European and some Middle Eastern heroes are represented. There is a focus on the perceived 'traditional' nature of these heroes, and there are similar discursive patterns seen within the writing of these heroes within short contemporary romances. Pierini talks about the importance of the focus on 'darkness' in these 'Mediterranean men' that is qualifyingly 'foreign', especially in comparison to the white Anglo-Saxon male. Often these novels seem to play on an assumed upon link between the Mediterranean men and the natural world.

12:00-1.15pm – Author and editor panel on diversity in popular romance publishing

• Featuring Ali Williams, Ria Cheyne, Eleanor Harkstead and Jeevani Charika/Rhoda Baxter

2pm-3pm – Learning and Teaching The Sheik

• A conversation with Professor Deborah Longworth and Professor Eric Selinger

Again, a summary has been tweeted by Ali Williams. Here's small part of it:

Eric Selinger was sharing his approaches to romance. The first sets out four approaches (Historical, Philosophical, Psychological and Literary). The second tool was derived from teaching Rose Lerner's Sweet Disorder: Improving Tale; Erotic Fiction; Novel of Ideas; Novel as Aesthetic Object. Selinger translates this as

• How does this book want me to behave?
• What does this book tell me that I might desire?
• What does this book want me to think about?
• What does this book want me to appreciate about itself?

Deb Longworth commented that thinking about formalised approaches like this allows the genre of popular romance to be legitimised for students.

3:30-4:30pm – Final roundtable and discussion – where now for The Sheik? 

There should be a special issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies appearing soon, dedicated to The Sheik in its centenary year.

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.