TWO New Calls for Papers at JPRS!

Eric M. Selinger

Two new Calls for Papers at the Journal of Popular Romance Studies!

First, there's one called "Romancing the Library," which should be of interest to a new group of scholars (and working librarians) engaged with romance media:

CALL FOR PAPERS: Romancing the Library 

Access to information is at the core of a library’s mission, whether it serves a public, academic, or special library audience. When it comes to romance novels, however, reader demand is often more than a library can meet, with constrained library budgets outstripped by the sheer volume of titles published each year. How, then, does a library decide which titles to purchase? What factors motivate selection or deselection? How do the explicitness of love scenes and / or controversial subject matter shape that decision making process? Where does the line between selection and censorship lie? 

Once an electronic or print title has been acquired, the library must decide where to house it within the collection and how best to inform readers of its existence. A library can create finding aids or subject guides, designate a specialist on the subject of romance, or find other ways to coordinate reference services around popular romance titles. What are the best practices for readers’ advisory and reference for romance? How are other media, such as romantic films or graphic novels, incorporated into reference services for romance novels? Is there a significant enough overlap between those audiences to warrant doing so? 

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) seeks articles for a special issue on the intersection between romance and all types of libraries, anywhere in the world. This issue will discuss policy and practice, controversies, patterns and changes in the way that the library profession deals with popular romance fiction and with romance in other media (film, graphic novels, magazines) as well. 

Submissions are particularly welcome on the following topics, although articles that examine other intersections between popular romance and libraries will also be considered for publication.

• Collection development policy, practice, and preservation

• E-books versus print books, publisher/vendor e-book check out and geographic limits

• Popular romance in special collections, browsing collections

• Defining a core collection of romance novels

• Censorship of popular romance in libraries

• Romance reference and readers’ advisory

• Romantic films and other media within the library

Submissions are due by May 1, 2014. 

This Special Issue of The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is guest edited by Crystal Goldman. Please submit scholarly articles between 5,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography. Pieces longer than 12,000 words will be returned unread. 

Manuscripts can be sent to An Goris, Managing Editor, managing.editor@jprstudies.org. Submissions should be Microsoft Word documents, with citations in MLA format. Please remove all identifying material (i.e. running heads with the author’s name) so that submissions can easily be sent out for anonymous peer review. Suggestions for appropriate peer reviewers are welcome. For more information on how to submit a paper, please visit http://jprstudies.org/submissions/.

Second, we have a call for papers on "Paranormal Romance."  There was oodles of interest in Paranormal at this Spring's PCA conference, and we hope to get lots of submissions, so please do spread the word!

Call for Papers:  Paranormal Romance 

Romance Writers of America (RWA) defines a paranormal romance as a “romance novel in which the future, a fantasy world, or paranormal elements are an integral part of the plot.”  Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, and J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood novels are just a few examples of the proliferation of this subgenre in the early 21st century.  Paranormal romance is also flourishing in a broader sense—in the urban and dark fantasy novels of authors like Ilona Andrews (Kate Daniels, The Edge) and Charlaine Harris (Southern Vampires); in feature films (Warm Bodies, Let the Right One In, Beautiful Creatures); in television (The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Supernatural, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead), and in digital media forms from graphic novels to video games. 

Why does the paranormal, in its myriad representations, resonate so strongly with pop culture consumers, particularly in its juxtaposition with romance?  What can the paranormal romance teach us about contemporary understandings of gender, sexuality, race, the body, hybridity, genre, and the market? 

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) seeks essay submissions for a special issue on Paranormal Romance.  Kristina Deffenbacher and Erin S. Young are guest editors.

We welcome submissions on the following topics, although all papers engaging with the subject of paranormal romance will be considered.  Submissions are due by July 1, 2014.

• How do paranormal settings, characterizations, attributes, etc. facilitate interrogations and re-imaginings of gender, sexuality, and/or intimacy?
• How are paranormal characterizations informed by existing cultural narratives about race, ethnicity, and national identity?
• How do paranormal romances use characters’ non-human or not-fully-human status to represent beyond-normative bodies, sex and/or violence?
• What assumptions or anxieties play out in contentions over the generic boundaries of paranormal romance and its relationship to other (sub-)genres?
• How does the generic hybridity of paranormal romance affect dynamics within texts, between texts and readers, and/or in the marketing of texts?
• Who are the consumers of paranormal romance?  How do blogs and online communities of paranormal romance writers and fans reflect and shape the genre?

Please submit scholarly articles between 5,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography. Pieces longer than 12,000 words will be returned unread. Manuscripts can be sent to An Goris, Managing Editor, managing.editor@jprstudies.org. Submissions should be Microsoft Word documents, with citations in MLA format. Please remove all identifying material (i.e. running heads with the author’s name) so that submissions can easily be sent out for anonymous peer review. Suggestions for appropriate peer reviewers are welcome. For more information on how to submit a paper, please visit http://jprstudies.org/submissions/.

More JPRS news coming soon!

Changes at IASPR!

--Eric Selinger

In the spring of 2009, Sarah S. G. Frantz founded the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) and its companion journal, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.  

After four remarkable years, marked by four international conferences, six issues of JPRS, and a co-edited volume (New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays), Sarah is stepping down from the presidency of IASPR, taking up a new position as Acquisition Editor for Riptide Publishing.  (She is also a freelance romance editor and BDSM consultant at Alphabet Editing.) 

We are happy to announce that Pamela Regis, formerly the Vice President of IASPR, will be assuming the Presidency of  the organization.  She is joined by two new officers as Vice-Presidents, An Goris and Jayashree Kamble, and by Chryssa Sharp as Treasurer.  The Conference Chairs for our upcoming international conferences will be Betty Kaklamanidou (2014, Thessaloniki), Crystal Goldman (2016, San Jose), and Margaret Toscano (2018, Salt Lake City). In the interim, odd-numbered years, IASPR will work with other organizations to foster scholarly panels and presentations on popular romance media at national and international gatherings sponsored by other organizations.

We thank Sarah for her vision and guidance, and we look forward to announcing more additions to the roster of IASPR board members and officers in the weeks to come.

JPRS 3.2: Georgette Heyer, Pamela Regis, and Popular Romance Studies

Laura Vivanco

Issue 3.2 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies is out now and includes a couple of essays about Georgette Heyer (including one written by me), a "roundtable" marking the the tenth anniversary of the publication of Pamela Regis's A Natural History of the Romance Novel and lots more:

• Editor’s Note: Issue 3.2


• “Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch of Regency Romance” by Laura Vivanco


• “’Who the devil wrote that?’: Intertextuality and Authorial Reputation in Georgette Heyer’s Venetia” by Elizabeth Barr


• “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Popular Romance Studies: What is it, and why does it matter?” by Lisa Fletcher


• Note from the Field: “Reflecting on Romance Novel Research: Past, Present and Future” by A. Dana Ménard


• Note from the Book Review Editor


• Review: Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels, by Hsu-Ming Teo


• Review: Romance, by Barbara Fuchs


• Review: Women and Romance: A Reader, by Susan Ostrov Weisser


• Regis Roundtable: After A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Introduction)


• “Ten Years After A Natural History of the Romance Novel: Thinking Back, Looking Forward” by Pamela Regis


• “Rebooting the Romance: The Impact of A Natural History of the Romance Novel” by Eric Murphy Selinger


• “A Natural History of the Romance Novel’s Enduring Romance with Popular Romance Studies” by An Goris


• “How to Tame a Dragon: Ten years after A Natural History of the Romance Novel” by Jayashree Kamble


• “On the Tenth Anniversary of Pamela Regis’s A Natural History of the Romance Novel ” by Sarah S. G. Frantz


• “Reading the Regis Roundtable: An Outsider’s Perspective” by Jonathan A. Allan

New Publication: Romance Readers and Interpersonal Sensitivity

Laura Vivanco

In an article that's still in press, titled "What You Read Matters: The Role of Fiction Genres in Predicting Interpersonal Sensitivity," Katrina Fong, Justin B. Mullin and Raymond A. Mar explain that they

investigated the role of four fiction genres (i.e., Domestic Fiction, Romance, Science-Fiction/Fantasy, Suspense/Thriller) in the relationship between fiction and interpersonal sensitivity, controlling for other individual differences. Participants completed a survey that included a lifetime print-exposure measure along with an interpersonal sensitivity task. Some, but not all, fiction genres were related to higher scores on our measure of interpersonal sensitivity. Furthermore, after controlling for personality, gender, age, English fluency, and exposure to nonfiction, only the Romance and Suspense/Thriller genres remained significant predictors of interpersonal sensitivity.

I've got a bit more about this, and the perception and reception of romance among non-romance-readers, at my blog.

Study Popular Romance Fiction Online

Laura Vivanco

Professor Pamela Regis would like to announce that McDaniel College is offering a 4-credit, undergraduate (sophomore/junior level) literature course on

Popular Romance Fiction

Where: It’s online. Anyone with an internet connection can take this course.

When: July 8 through August 9, 2013 but the course is asynchronous. In other words, you sign onto the course when your schedule permits. You will never be required to be in front of your computer at any set time in order to attend class. You attend class on your schedule, because the course is available on the College’s Blackboard server 24/7.

Instructor: Dr. Kathleen Miller, specialist in nineteenth-century British lit, the gothic, disability studies, and romance fiction.

Course description: Popular Romance Fiction will be an investigation of the most popular form of fiction in the western world: the romance novel. Readings begin with the advent of the modern form of the romance novel in England in 1740, but are drawn mostly from the nineteenth-through-twenty-first century romance novel. We will be reading the following romances:

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Boomerang Bride, Fiona Lowe
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Jane, April Linder
Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick

Students will explore the popularity of romance fiction, and consider its depiction of courtship and sexuality through a variety of critical approaches including formalist, feminist, and gender studies. Assignments will include regular contributions to the course’s discussion board, an active presence on social media related to the romance writer/reader community, short writing assignments, an argumentative essay, and a web portfolio.

To register: Drop Pam Regis an email pregis@mcdaniel.edu and she will email you the brief enrollment form and instructions. You do not have to be admitted to McDaniel College through our regular admissions process in order to take this course.

Cost: ENG 2272-OL Popular Romance Fiction, 4 credits: $1570. Auditing the course: $785.

Enrollment deadline: July 1, 2013.

German Romances in the US

Laura Vivanco

Lynne Tatlock's German Writing, American Reading: Women and the Import of Fiction, 1866-1917 was published by the Ohio State University Press in August and although the title doesn't specifically mention romances (and in any case "romance" had a much broader meaning then than it tends to do in the US today), I suspect that chapter 4, "The German Art of the Happy Ending: Embellishing and Expanding the Boundaries of Home" may be of interest to romance scholars. The body of works under analysis comprises

nearly 100 original texts, approximately 180 American translations, more than 1,000 editions and reprint editions, and hundreds of thousands of books strong—comprised popular fiction written by German women and translated by American women. [...] Lynne Tatlock examines the genesis and circulation in America of this hybrid product over four decades and beyond. These entertaining novels came to the consumer altered by processes of creative adaptation and acculturation that occurred in the United States as a result of translation, marketing, publication, and widespread reading over forty years. These processes in turn de-centered and disrupted the national while still transferring certain elements of German national culture. Most of all, this mass translation of German fiction by American women trafficked in happy endings that promised American readers that their fondest wishes for adventure, drama, and bliss within domesticity and their hope for the real power of love, virtue, and sentiment could be pleasurably realized in an imagined and quaintly old-fashioned Germany—even if only in the time it took to read a novel. (emphasis added)

Here's a bit more about Chapter 4:

Chapter 4 examines German novels as American reading from the perspective of the happy ending, an international signature of romance novels and of nearly all of the German novels by women in my dataset. The chapter uncovers and analyzes variations in plotting ritual death and recovery to a state of freedom that characterize these German novels and that appealed to American readers by offering them the vicarious experience of a multiplicity of female subjectivities and female-determined male subjectivities while cautiously expanding the boundaries of home in a place called Germany. I combine analysis of texts with examination of exemplars of books and the history of the book publication of each translated text.

CFP: Popular Literary Genres

Laura Vivanco

A couple of new calls for papers. First, from C21 Literature:

Genre has become an increasingly significant part of academic and popular criticism since the year 2000. From Steampunk to Crunch Lit, Young Adult to Nordic Noir, new genres have arisen to sustain fiction and popular culture markets in the new millennium. Issue three of C21 Literature asks if the politics of genre can offer insights into developments across the first thirteen years of the twenty-first century. If genre development is a process of evolution then how and where do these genres originate – and what are the intertextual and historical frames in which they operate? The journal calls for articles examining developments in genre across the twenty-first century. Topics may include:

• the history of literary genre
• multi-platformed genre developments
• new genres and authors
• cultural studies and genre
• politics and genre
• humour and genre
• academia and genre
• technology and genre
• popular culture and parody
• alternative histories
• old genres, new millennium

The full call for papers can be found here.

Also on the topic of genre, Anna Faktorovich is "currently finishing a book for McFarland called Formulaic Writing within Genres on currently popular literary genres" which apparently "covers genres like fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and romance" (Boston Literary Magazine). She's also planning

on submitting a panel proposal to the Rhetoric Society conference coming up in May 2014. I would like to find 2-3 other presenters for my panel. You should be an assistant+ professor at a college or university in the US. [...] I would like to create a panel on the generic structure of currently popular fiction genres (primarily in the novel). Please familiarize yourself with the Rhetoric Society prior to sending a query - they are interested in close rhetorical textual studies (genre, tone, characters, etc.). If you are interested, please email a couple of sentences on the topic that you would like to present on, and a short paragraph bio with your credentials. The proposals are due on July 1, 2013, so I need to receive all queries by June 7, 2013 - so I'll have enough time to pull the panel together. Participants will also have a chance to publish their papers in the tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal, now in its 5th volume. Email queries to director@anaphoraliterary.com, to the attention of Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., Director, Anaphora Literary Press.

The full call for papers can be found here.

CFP for GLBTQ Studies at MAPACA

Laura Vivanco

Details from here:

Conference: Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association
Dates: Thursday, 11/7 thru Saturday, 11/9
Location: Atlantic City, New Jersey
Venue: Tropicana Casino and Resort
Deadline: Proposals must be received by June 14, 2013
Web Site: www.mapaca.net

The GLBTQ Studies Area of MAPACA welcomes proposals of relevance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities. Proposals are encouraged on any medium of popular or American culture. Proposals of interest for the Atlantic City 2013 conference might include:

*Queering the Internet: The GLBTQ Web
*GLBT Publishing Today
*Sports and Gay/Lesbian Visibility
*The Female Eye: Agency or Appropriation?
*The Gay Bar: Patron or Patronizing?
*GLBTQ Representation in Contemporary Popular Culture
*Where are we Now: Gay vs. Queer Sensibilities
*GLBTQ Media Coverage: From Suicides to It Gets Better
*The GLBTQ Superhero/ine?
*HIV/AIDS and Erotic Writing
*The Violet Quill writers
*Popular GLBTQ romance novels/novelists
*GLBTQ comics/graphic novels/Yaoi

However, proposals addressing any topic of GLBTQ significance in popular or American culture are welcome. Please log into the MAPACA website to submit a proposal. You can find directions at this URL: http://mapaca.net/help/conference/submitting-abstracts-conference.

You may also contact Dr. Mark John Isola via markjohn—at—alumni.tufts.edu with any questions.

Please note: Presenters may only present 1 paper at MAP/ACA; please do not submit multiple papers to multiple areas. Also, please note a sliding scale fee applies for conference registration.

Teaching the Romance (Prologue; first in a series)

Eric Selinger

In the fall of 2005 I came back from a quarter's research leave to teach my first DePaul University class on popular romance fiction.  Since then, I have taught nearly thirty of these ten-week courses on the genre, ranging from large undergraduate surveys to senior and graduate (MA) seminars.  I'm coming up on a break in that teaching:  I go on another research leave in the fall, and won't teach another romance class until a year from now, at least.  So before what I've learned from all that teaching slips out of my mind, I'd like to post a series of pieces on it here at Teach Me Tonight.

The text of these posts will be derived, at least at first, from a couple of conference papers I've given on teaching popular romance, with some additional commentary, book lists, and so on, added to freshen them up.  I must admit, I'm at the point in the quarter right now when it seems--just like clockwork, year after year--that I know very little about either teaching or popular romance, but I'll try to keep the self-doubt to a minimum!  (If you want to read about that, you can find more at my personal / poetry-teaching blog, Say Something Wonderful.)  My goal in breaking things up, rather than writing one long post, is to give myself room to meander and muse, and if you'd like to ask me questions about the courses, the books, the assignments, I'd be very glad to answer them.

By way of a prologue, let me just say that my courses here have been various sizes.  A 20-student "seminar" was the smallest, I think (not counting independent studies), and the largest ones are  are 35-40 student lecture / discussion classes.  At whatever size they're offered, however, they fill up quickly:  mostly with women, as a rule, but I have had up to 20% of the class be male.

To teach such courses, I have learned, is something of a privilege.  Not many people get to teach popular romance fiction, and many who do, approach it in the context of broader courses on literary fiction, popular culture, or women’s studies. But there are distinctive challenges and rewards to teaching a course entirely on the genre, and I hope these posts will both inspire and equip some of you reading them to pitch such courses to your respective deans and department chairs.  If you do, and they bite, let me know.

(Image is my alter-ego, Prof. H. M. Wogglebug, T.E.)

New Theses: Traitorous Bodies Exploring Discipline Relationships

Laura Vivanco

In "'Traitorous Bodies': Cartesian Dualism in Romance Novels by Susan Johnson and E. L. James," Taylor D. Cortesi argues that

Applying René Descartes’s theory of mind/body dualism to the heroines in Susan Johnson’s Seized by Love and E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey reveals not only a separation between the heroines’ minds and bodies, but proves that both heroines are depicted as distinctly body. As such, serious complications arise for the female characters, including the acceptance of sexual violence and submission to the patriarchy. (viii)

Cortesi suggests that

while Fifty Shades of Grey is superficially about the Dominant/Submissive BDSM relationship that develops between protagonists Ana Steele and Christian Grey, it is also the story of a Dominant/Submissive relationship that forms within Ana herself. Because of the Cartesian mind/body dualism evident in Ana, the opposition within her echoes the oppositional relationship between the two main characters. Ana’s mind is at first independent and strong, just as Ana is when she first meets Christian; however, once her body is awakened, Ana’s mind is weakened and becomes submissive to the desires of her body, just as she is weakened and controlled by Christian. (68-69)

Melissa E Travis's PhD thesis, "Assume the Position: Exploring Discipline Relationships" isn't solely about romance novels but it does include a section on "discipline romance novels."  As explained in the abstract,

Discipline relationships are consensual adult relationships between submissive and dominant partners who employ authority and corporal punishment. This population uses social media to discuss the private nature of their ritualized fantasies, desires, and practices. Participants of these relationships resist a sadomasochistic label of BDSM or domestic abuse.

Romance novels about such relationships are apparently growing in number:

Discipline romance novels, published through independent vanity presses or as serials through memberships, are a salient feature in discipline culture. Over the last ten years I have watched the publication and sales of discipline romance novels grow from a grass roots, blog-based movement to a more formal established network. (159)

Since these are romance novels, they share many features with other romance novels but whereas Susan Elizabeth Phillips argues in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance that

I can only shake my head in bewilderment when I hear the romance novel criticized for depicting women as being submissive to domineering men. Are the critics reading the same books I am? What is the ultimate fate of the most arrogant, domineering, ruthless macho hero any romance writer can create? He is tamed. (57-58)

in discipline romance novels the heroes are

often dominant men, or men who find their dominant selves because of a woman who needs to be tamed or brought to submission. In traditional romance novels, dangerous men are often tamed and healed by strong heroines (Regis 2003:171). In discipline romance novels, dominant men often take on headstrong or unruly women and tame them through the use of discipline. One element of discipline romance novels is that submissive women are dangerous to themselves, their relationships, or behave destructively and must be changed through discipline from a dominant partner. These dominant men are unafraid of emotionality, brave women, or taming a bratty woman. They sometimes include a dangerous man archetype, but also include taming the shrew, and rape fantasies. After she is tamed, both characters have a mutually satisfying dominant man/submissive woman traditional role depiction, which fulfills both partners. (160-61)

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Cortesi, Taylor D. "'Traitorous Bodies': Cartesian Dualism in Romance Novels by Susan Johnson and E. L. James." M. Lit. thesis, Texas State University - San Marcos, 2013.

Phillips, Susan Elizabeth. "The Romance and the Empowerment of Women." Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Ed. Jayne Ann Krentz. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2013. 53-59.

Travis, Melissa E. "Assume the Position: Exploring Discipline Relationships." Sociology Dissertations, Paper 71. Ph.D thesis. Georgia State University, 2013. [Section on "Discipline Romance Novels", pp. 159-66.]

50 Shades (to be a Lover)

Eric Selinger

I'm not sure this counts as a "Musing on Romance Fiction from an Academic Perspective," but I'm not at all sure that it doesn't!  A little parody, this, of Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover," performed by yours truly (Eric) earlier this year.

The lyrics are all in the "description" area, below the video.

Enjoy!

Porn Studies

Laura Vivanco

Pam Regis notified me of a new journal, Porn Studies, which is to be launched in 2014.  The New York Times reports that

The journal, edited by two British academics, Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith, has already inspired some hearty scholarly endorsements. “We have waited a long time for an academic journal that treats the subject of the representation of human sexuality with the seriousness it deserves,” Julie Peakman, a historian at the University of London and the author of “Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in 18th-Century England,” said in a statement. “I look forward to a lively and disciplined debate across different disciplines.”

I wonder if one of those disciplines might be popular romance studies given that romance, and particularly erotic romance,

often asserts itself as something other than pornography. It claims not to just be erotic, but romantic. The romance part ought to indicate that it is doing more with sex and sexuality than merely recounting various bits of fucking for the reader’s titillation. Otherwise, why call it romance? Why not just be pornography?  (Toscano)

The boundaries between romance, erotica and pornography may be of particular interest at the moment given the fame and popularity of the Fifty Shades trilogy: "More than just an instance of a particular genre of fiction, Fifty Shades has spawned considerable discussion of the significance of ‘women’s popular erotic fiction’ generally" (Phillips and Trevenen). As Jodi McAlister argues, Fifty Shades

occupies a strangely liminal position at the crossroads of several genres, adopting structural elements from both modern popular romance fiction and 19th-century pornography.

The call for papers for the Journal of Porn Studies can be found here.

--------
McAlister, Jodi. "Fifty Shades of Genre." Popular Romance Project. 8 Nov. 2012.

Phillips, Kristen and Claire Trevenen. "CFP – Shattering Releases: The Pleasures and Politics of Popular Erotic Fiction (edited collection)." 2013.

Schuessler, Jennifer. "Routledge to Publish Porn Studies Journal." The New York Times. 30 April 2013.

Toscano, Angela. "Why I Now Hate Erotic Romance." Dear Author. 30 April 2013. Originally published at That Sly Wench, 9 January 2012.