New Publications: Race, Rape, and Romance in Maltese Libraries

Maybe I've simplified things a little in the title of the post due to the allure of alliteration. But there's definitely a lot in these recent publications about race/ethnicity and racism.

As always, if there's a hyperlink in the title, that means it's freely accessible online.

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Abdullah-Poulos, Layla (2023) "Sisters, Skanks, and Jezebels: American Muslim Fiction and the Other Woman." The Bloomsbury Handbook of Muslims and Popular Culture. Ed. Hussein Rashid and Kristian Petersen. London: Bloomsbury. 205-214. [Excerpt here.]

Derbyshire, Valerie Grace (2023). “ ‘Do you think I haven’t paid for what I did?’: Rape in the Mills & Boon Romantic Novels of Penny Jordan.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 12. 

Garcia, Christina (2023). The Race of Publishing: The Troubling Whiteness in Publishing and the Forces Pushing Back. Master of Arts in English, Texas Christian University.

Henderson, Aneeka Ayanna (2024). "Popular Romance and Literary Undergrounds." The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary African American Literature. Ed. Yogita Goyal. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 164-179. [Excerpt]

Hutter, Verena (2023). "Fire, Savannah, and Passion: The New Africa Novel and the Construction of White Femininity." Gender and German Colonialism: Intimacies, Accountabilities, Intersections. Ed. Chunjie Zhang and Elisabeth Krimmer. New York: Routledge. [See https://rsdb.vivanco.me.uk/bibliography/fire-savannah-and-passion-new-africa-novel-and-construction-white-femininity for more details.]

Kamblé, Jayashree (2023). “Romancing the University: BIPOC Scholars in Romance Novels in the 1980s and Now.” Esferas Literarias 6: 39-55.

Phumithammarat, Nanphatchaon (2023). The Cultural politics of Chinese -Thai Identities in Ethnic Romance Novels by Female Authors. PhD thesis, Silpakorn University.

Posti, Piia K. (2024). “‘I Get to Exist as a Black Person in the World’: Bridgerton as Speculative Romance and Alternate History on Screen.” History and Speculative Fiction. Ed. John L. Hennessey. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. [The whole book is available for free since it's open access.]

Limond, Verity. (2023) "‘The door is open to everyone’: The public libraries of Gozo." Omertaa, Journal for applied anthropology. 745-754.

News + New Items: Thai Romance, Keepers, Disability and more

Laura Vivanco

I'm always very happy to see scholars moving into the field of romance studies, so I'm glad to be able to mention that Johanna Hoorenman "is currently working on a cultural history of Native American themed popular romance novels, tracing the roots of the subgenre to early American women's captivity narratives and James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans" (http://muse.jhu.edu/article/662582).

Ria Cheyne's written a post for Public Books about "Disability and the Romance Novel."

Kecia Ali's been at Smart Bitches Trashy Books to talk about her Human in Death: Morality and Mortality in JD Robb’s Novels.

Mary Lynne Nielsen writes at Dear Author that "the idea of some level of financial security is interwoven in romance."

Christian Peukert and Imke Reimers have found that "romance novels are more likely to be self-published than other genres [...]. The difference becomes particularly evident after 2010, as self-publishing became a successful “mainstream” distribution channel" and "After 2008 (the year after the introduction of the Kindle), there is a small increase in advances for romance novels, compared to a slight drop in advances for other genres. More pronounced, there is a sharp increase in deal sizes for romance novels after 2010 (the introduction of the iPad), whereas the deal sizes for all other categories remain almost constant." They write that:

The fact that more deals were made with future stars among the romance genre throughout the time period of our study suggests that publishers have been able to predict the future success of romance novels better than the success of non-romance books. After 2010 – concurrent with the large rise in self-publishing among romance bestsellers – the ability to predict bestsellers among romance novels increased further, with an increase in the share of future bestsellers among romance deals from about 2% to 5%.

New to the Romance Wiki academic bibliography are:

Markert, John, 2017. 

“God is Love: The Christian Romance Market.” Publishing Research Quarterly. Online First.

Christian publishers have long produced romance novels, but the production of these slim books of love have not been a significant part of their overall output. This started to change in the 1980s in response to the increased sensuality found in secular romance novels. The Christian romance has undergone even more of a resurgence at the outset of the new millennium for the same reason: secular romances have notched up the sensuality of their romances today and Christian houses have responded to their constituents who tire of the sexual slant of these secular novels. Indeed, the strength of the Christian market has not gone unnoticed by mainstream houses and numerous secular houses, notably Harlequin, are today producing Christian-themed romances. The secular Christian message is somewhat attenuated, however, which helps explain the continued popularity of those romances produced by Christian publishers. (Abstract)

Khuankaew, Sasinee, 2017. 

"Femininity and Masculinity in Twenty-First Century Thai Romantic Fictions." The Asian Conference on Literature 2017: Official Conference Proceedings. [pdf available free in full online]

This paper is a thematically chronological supplement to the work in

Khuankaew, Sasinee, 2015. 

"Femininity and masculinity in three selected twentieth-century Thai romance fictions." Ph.D thesis, Cardiff University. Abstract Pdf

Veros, Vassiliki, 2017. 

"Keepers: Marking the Value of the Books on my Shelves." Proceedings from the Document Academy 4.1, Article 4. [pdf available free in full online]

Essays on Outlander (Forthcoming) and a Thesis on Thai Romance

Laura Vivanco

Due out at the end of July this year is Adoring Outlander: Essays on Fandom, Genre and the Female Audience, edited by Valerie Estelle Frankel and published by McFarland and Co. According to details provided by the editor, it will include:

Part II: The Romance Question: Is it or Isn't it?

" 'Linked ... through the body of one man': Black Jack Randall as a Non-traditional Romance Villain", Michelle L. Jones, University of Regina

"The Good, The Bad and Lord John Grey: Observations on Desire, Sex, Violence, Lust and Love", Sandi Solis

"Travelling Through Time and Genre: Are the Outlander Books Romance Novels?", Jodi McAlister, MacQuarie University

"Gabaldon and the Practice of Gay Male Homoerotic Reading", Anthony Guy Patricia, Concord University

Khuankaew, Sasinee, 2015. 

"Femininity and masculinity in three selected twentieth-century Thai romance fictions." Ph.D thesis, Cardiff University.

The main purpose of this study is to examine a popular Thai genre of the novel, romance fiction, with a focus on the modes of subjectivity and discourses of femininity and masculinity to be found in Thai romance novels between the 1940s and 1990s. The thesis also seeks to locate the various socio-cultural contexts of Thai society, which influence the constitution of Thai gender relations and the transformation of gender norms. Additionally, it attempts to address the issue of the usefulness of Western theories of gender and romance, which are widely regarded in Thailand as tools of Westernization and new forms of colonialism. This study suggests that Thai gender relations are complicated, since there are several disparate aspects that influence the constitution of male and female subjectivity. Western influence is one of these aspects that help define femininity and masculinity, while domestic beliefs also play a salient role as palimpsests that are not easily erased. Thus, the representation of various modes of gendered subjectivity in romance fiction concurrently indicates both changes in and the reproduction of discourses that define an „essence‟ of gender identity that accords with traditional Thai cultural beliefs including the deep-rooted idea that the primary purpose of writing is didactic.  (More details here)

and not on the Wiki, since it's not a dissertation/thesis and isn't focused on romance:

Hu, Huizi, 2015.

"Fall 2015 Award Winner: The Power of Novels." The Diana McDonald Writer's Challenge. Parkland College.

"To be honest, I used to think the period when I read so many romance novels was worthless. However, while I am writing this essay and taking an entirely new look at how novels influenced me, I have realized that even these popular novels, which are often underestimated, actually improved my critical thinking ability and my rhetorical ability."