Events, New Items on the Romance Bibliography, Romance in the Media

Laura Vivanco

The call for papers for PopCAANZ 2017 (to be held in Wellington, New Zealand) is online, with Jodi McAlister the area chair for popular romance. The deadline for proposals is 17 March 2017 and further details can be found here.

The University of Melbourne’s Publishing and Communications program will be holding a debate on the topic “In the battle of the genres, romance will always win”. That's on the 6th of October 2016 in Melbourne (more details here).

New to the Romance Wiki:

Andreu, Alicia G., 2010. 

La construcción editorial de Corín Tellado. Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo. Excerpt

 

Bonelli, María Valentina, 2012. 

"La virgen desollada: la perdida de la virginidad en las novelas de Corín Tellado durante el franquismo", Gramma 1.4.

 

Coste, Didier, 1981. 

"Installments of the Heart: Text Delimitation in Periodical Narrative and Its Consequences." Sub-Stance10/11: 56-65.

 

de Andrade, Roberta Manuela Barros and Erotilde Honório Silva, 2010. 

"A vida em cor de rosa: o romance sentimental e a ditadura militar no Brasil", Famecos 17.2: 41-48.

 

González García, María Teresa, 1998. 

Corín Tellado: medio siglo de novela de amor, 1946-1996. Oviedo: Pentalfa Ediciones.

 

Hernández Guerrero, María José, 2016. 

"Prosumidoras de traducciones: Aproximación al fenómeno de la traducción fan de novela romántica", Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 29.1: 88-114. Abstract

 

Oklopčić, Biljana, 2016. 

"Medieval heresy in Croatian historical romances: a case study of Marija Jurić Zagorka’s Plameni inkvizitori." Neohelicon (online first 10 August 2016). Abstract

O'Neil, Kathryn M., 2016. 

"Women's rhetoric and the romance novel genre." M.A. Thesis, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Abstract

Pöppel, Hubert, 2014. 

"Las reinas de la novela rosa en la España y Alemania: Corín Tellado y Hedwig Courths-Mahler", Lingüística y Literatura 66: 153-170.

Not new to the bibliography, but newly placed online is:

Rose, Suzanna, 1985. 

"Is Romance Dysfunctional?" International Journal of Women's Studies, 8.3: 250-265.

In the Media:

Brown, Mark, 2016. 'Mills & Boon romances are actually feminist texts, academic says: Val Derbyshire says no one should be embarrassed to read much-derided books, arguing many are literature of protest', The Guardian, Wednesday 24 August.

More coverage of Val's opinions can be found in this clip from the BBC (though I'm not sure if it's available to listeners outside the UK) and at the Daily Mail.

Stafford, Annabel, 2016. 'What's not to love about romance novels?', The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 2016. This discusses the academic stream at the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia conference with reference to the research being done by Jodi McAlister, Catherine Roach, Sandra Barletta and Lisa Fletcher.

Kaetrin's write-up of the conference's academic stream can be found here and Leah Ashton's is here.

University of Love Conference Agenda

Laura Vivanco

The joint programme of events put together by the Romance Writers of Australia and Flinders University for the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia conference (18-21 August) is now online. It includes:

• Cliteracy: Women and Sexual Pleasure in the Romance Novel
  - Presented by: Dr. Catherine Roach, New College, University of Alabama


• Love and Listening: The Erotics of Talk in the Popular Romance Novel
  - Presented by: Dr. Jodi McAlister


• The Genre World of Romance in the Twenty-First Century
  - Presented by: Dr. Lisa Fletcher, University of Tasmania; Dr. Beth Driscoll, University of Melbourne; Dr. Kim Wilkins, University of Queensland


• Defying Decorative Objectification: The Appeal of the Heroine in Historical Western Romance Fiction.
  - Presented by: Dr. Amy Matthews, Flinders University


• Representations of Single Mothers in Contemporary American Romance Fiction
  - Presented by: Ms. Michelle Douglas, University of Newcastle


• The (Saggy) Bottom Line: Women of a “Certain Age” and Romance Fiction
  - Presented by: Dr. Sandra Barletta

Full details of all the papers and activities can be found here.

New PhD Thesis: Roles, Representations of Age, and the Non-traditional Romance Heroine

Laura Vivanco

Sandra Barletta (who writes romance as Sandra Antonelli) recently completed her PhD and the thesis is now available free online. In it she issues a "call to arms to other authors, besides me, to speak out, to rally and write romance novels about older heroines" (62).

In one chapter she states that

romance publishing is profit-focused and wary of undertaking anything that challenges its revenue. The chapter reveals through interviews conducted with various romance publishing editors [...] that there is an inherent conservatism at work in the industry that makes it less willing to take risks with publications valorising older women in the role of romance heroine. These editors consider Women’s Fiction as the ‘proper’ home for female protagonists of a certain age. While publishing profits play a large role in limiting the role and story for older women, there is also an industry resistance to the idea of a sexually active older women [sic] who is beyond childbearing age. (53)

Therefore,

For the author who wants to take risks in presenting older women as worthy participants in the romance paradigm, there are considerable obstacles to negotiate in a largely risk-averse industry. (57)

Sandra would, however, appear to have negotiated them successfully as

during the course of my research, I had two romance novels accepted for publication by Harlequin Escape. In no way does this suggest this outcome was not a long and frustrating enterprise. In the four years it took me to be offered a publishing contract, vast changes occurred within the publishing industry. The demise of brick and mortar book stores, the ongoing rise of Amazon, and the explosion of e-books, are all indications of a shift away from traditional models of publishing, and an accompanying shift in thinking among readers, authors and publishers. (57)

Her A Basic Renovation and For Your Eyes Only were published in 2013 as e-books by Escape Publishing (an imprint of Harlequin Enterprises Australia).
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Barletta, Sandra A. Cougars, Grannies, Evil Stepmothers, and Menopausal Hot Flashers: Roles, Representations of Age, and the Non-traditional Romance Heroine. PhD thesis in Creative Writing and Literary Studies, Queensland University of Technology, 2014.

Stranger than Fiction?

Laura Vivanco

Sometimes a true story will make me wonder if it's stranger than fiction, and that was particularly so in this case, because I'd only just read a fictional version of a very similar situation, written by Jenna Bayley-Burke and posted online in 2007 at The Long and the Short of It.

[They've got a lot of short stories in their archives (from 2007, 2008 and 2009.) As I was reading through them, I came across a couple which reminded me of Sarah's tweets (you'll have to scroll down a bit to read them) about Sandra Barletta's paper at the 2009 IASPR conference, on “A First Kiss is Still A First Kiss: Ageism, Romance Heroines and the Mid-Life Romance Reader.”]






The picture of the one ring came from Wikimedia Commons.