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.

Non-Text Academic Commentary: Margo Hendricks (on Beverly Jenkins) and Val Derbyshire (on Penny Jordan)

Professor Margo Hendricks' Masterclass "Those Purple Hands Really Intrigue Me" on Beverly Jenkins' Indigo is now available on YouTube

Dr. Val Derbyshire has discussed Penny Jordan on The Categorically Romance Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/bg/podcast/episode-113-on-penny-jordan-with-dr-val-derbyshire/id1558382869?i=1000555286451

or https://thecategoricallyromancepod.podbean.com/e/episode-113-on-penny-jordan-with-dr-val-derbyshire/

Romance Roundup: Spanish romance in English, Crime fiction wins in Scotland, Romance defended

Laura Vivanco

A new, English translation of a novel by Corín Tellado has been published:

In 1962, Unesco declared her the most-read Spanish author alongside Cervantes. [...] Mario Vargas Llosa [...] has supplied the prologue to the translation.

“[Tellado] was, in all likelihood, the most significant sociocultural phenomenon in the Spanish language since the Golden Age,” writes the Peruvian-born Nobel laureate. “What might ostensibly appear to be heresy – and from a qualitative perspective it is – ceases to be so if we begin to view things in quantitative terms. Borges, García Márquez, Ortega y Gasset, any of the most original thinkers and writers in my language that you might care to mention, none of them have reached as many readers or had so great an influence on the way in which people feel, speak, love, hate, understand life and human relations, than María del Socorro Tellado López, Socorrín to her friends.”

Duncan Wheeler, associate professor of Spanish studies at the University of Leeds, was researching the cultural politics of Spain’s post-Franco transition to democracy when he noticed that her readers had been ignominiously lumped in with fans of Julio Iglesias and his ilk.

After devouring 50 of her books bought for a euro each at Madrid’s El Rastro flea market four years ago, he began to look beyond the comparisons with Cartland and consider Tellado as a chronicler of Spanish society [...] the books offer a valuable overview of an evolving Spain. Not only do they reflect the changing status of women as the tourism boom allowed them to leave home to work in hotels and other service industries, they also depict the country’s nascent celebrity culture and its fascination with all things American. (The Guardian)

The details of the translation are:

Corín Tellado, Thursdays with Leila, trans. Duncan Wheeler, intro. Diana Holmes and Duncan Wheeler, prologue Mario Vargas Llosa (Cambridge: MHRA New Translations, 2016)

More details of the cost and how to obtain the volume are available from The Modern Humanities Research Association.

I've often seen romance referred as the best-selling genre of popular fiction but presumably that's in the US/North American market. At least, at the end of November the Scottish Book Trust revealed that

crime/thriller books are the single most popular type of fiction in Scotland.

In a recent Ipsos MORI Scotland survey of 1,000 adults, just over 1 in 4 Scots (27%) who read for enjoyment said that books which fictionalise crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives topped their choice of reading or listening genres. The next most popular genre were science fiction/fantasy and biography/autobiography, both at 10%, followed by historical fiction at 9%.

While the crime genre was the most popular among readers of all ages, the second most popular genre among young readers (aged 16-34) was science fiction/fantasy (15%), while readers aged 55 and over chose historical fiction as their second preference (14%). (Scottish Book Trust)

To end on a more positive note for romance, Val Derbyshire's been busy trying to change perceptions of popular romance. She's reviewed Jenna Kernan's The Shifter's Choice (Harlequin Mills & Boon) in Revenant's special issue on werewolves. It's good to see a romance novel reviewed (and the genre defended) in an academic journal:

this is a romance where the author is asking her readers to suspend disbelief quite a lot. However, like most Mills & Boon romances, it's not as empty-headed as literary critics would have you believe. The story raises several issues of interest to contemporary society, including such matters as the selfishness of our Western consumption-driven culture in which the gulf between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' is ever widening.

Earlier this year she was on the BBC arguing that romance is feminist and a lot more of her thoughts on that and other issues in the genre can be found in this short booklet about Harlequin Mills & Boon romances. Among the most thought-provoking parts for me was the one on "defamiliarisation":

Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky coined the term 'defamiliarisation'. He used this to describe the capacity of art to invest the familiar with strangeness and thereby enhance perception.

'Defamiliarisation' is not simply a question of perception; it is the essence of literariness. Authors who 'bare the device' in literature and expose literature's artificiality, defamiliarise its tropes and render it into 'true art'.

Mills & Boons do this repeatedly.

this is a romance where the author is asking her readers to suspend disbelief quite a lot. However, like most Mills & Boon romances, it’s not as empty-headed as literary critics would have you believe. The story raises several issues of interest to contemporary society, including such matters as the selfishness of our Western consumption-driven culture in which the gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is ever widening. - See more at: http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/the-shifters-choice-jenna-kernan/#sthash.Uw7pzzPj.b9eMPXVX.dpuf

this is a romance where the author is asking her readers to suspend disbelief quite a lot. However, like most Mills & Boon romances, it’s not as empty-headed as literary critics would have you believe. The story raises several issues of interest to contemporary society, including such matters as the selfishness of our Western consumption-driven culture in which the gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is ever widening. - See more at: http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/the-shifters-choice-jenna-kernan/#sthash.Uw7pzzPj.b9eMPXVX.dpuf

this is a romance where the author is asking her readers to suspend disbelief quite a lot. However, like most Mills & Boon romances, it’s not as empty-headed as literary critics would have you believe. The story raises several issues of interest to contemporary society, including such matters as the selfishness of our Western consumption-driven culture in which the gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is ever widening. - See more at: http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/the-shifters-choice-jenna-kernan/#sthash.Uw7pzzPj.b9eMPXVX.dpuf

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, 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.

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

Reporting back on a conference

Laura Vivanco

I went to the Representations of Romantic Relationships and the Romance Genre in Contemporary Women’s Writing symposium/mini-conference yesterday and I've written up my notes over at my blog.

There were papers on Harlequin Mills & Boon and on Mary Balogh, some on works which might (or might not) be classified as romance and papers which discussed other works of fiction by women in relation to popular romance fiction. They included:

Veera Mäkelä, Independent Researcher (previously studying at the University of Helsinki) - Acting for Herself, by Herself: Learning, Regaining, and Employing Female Agency in Mary Balogh's Dark Angel, Lord Carew's Bride and The Famous Heroine.

Dr. Amy Burge, University of Edinburgh - Beyond the Alpha: Sex, Masculinity and the Exotic in twenty-first century Harlequin Mills & Boon romance.

Val Derbyshire, University of Sheffield - "In these modern times": Reading Harlequin Mills & Boon Romantic Novels as Signs of the Times

Alicia Williams, Independent Researcher - Busting the Mills & Boon Myth: Category Romance as an Instrument for Change