A message from Kate Macdonald: If you work on 20thC British popular print culture, in any form, and would like to discuss writing a chapter on your special subject for a forthcoming OUP collection of essays, with final text due in late 2013, please email kate.macdonald@ugent.beI contacted Dr Macdonald and she told me that she doesn't yet have anyone volunteering a popular romance chapter; she'd be interested in hearing about one.
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| 'Love in the European Union' by Starscream from Wikimedia Commons |
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character
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structure
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Romance
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revision
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Publishing
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For those of you who have heard of Jennifer Crusie's involvement with The Writewell Academy and are wondering if there's a difference between the courses on offer there and at McDaniel College, we explain the Writewell/McDaniel relationship in this way:Although the information from Writewell will be part of the McDaniel program, it will not be in the same form. Writewell is baseline level introduction to creative writing, consisting of just the lectures and support materials. Writewell's creators don't read anybody's work for Writewell. McDaniel's program is a full blown, hands on creative writing program, workshops, critiques, etc. Professor Crusie does read and offer critique. She says, "It's the difference between a really good bicycle and a Mercedes."
Today the Popular Romance Project has an interview up with Eric and Sarah, in which they mention the napkin which started a whole new field of academic study. Romance scholarship, of course, not napkin-folding.For those of you who are romance readers and writers, have you spoken with any of these scholars? What do you think of their attempts to look at popular romance seriously?
For those of you who are scholars, what kinds of research are you doing? Has IASPR made a difference in your life?-----------
Through a consideration of desert romances (mass-market romances whose hero is a sultan, sheikh, or desert prince), this essay argues that the racialization of Arabs and Muslims in contemporary popular culture operates by conflating ethnicity, religion, geography, and the notion of civilization. As the racialization of actual Arabs and Muslims in the global North has become more overt, the representational racialization of sheikhs in desert romances has become more covert. Ironically, precisely because romance novels must protect the fantasy narrative by submerging any overt references to race, they are useful for exploring the shifting meanings of race vis-à-vis Arabs and Muslims.And here's a quote:
the conflation of dark and dangerous, signifying a conflation of race and violence, in the sheikh’s eroticized sexuality functions according to longstanding U.S. racial logics that simultaneously uphold and disavow the links between race and sexuality.
To some extent, these links can be seen in the romance genre as a whole. This is not to say that there is a plethora of nonwhite heroes in mass-market romances; in fact, a common complaint among romance readers is the lack of “minorities” in romance and, in particular, of multiracial romances. However, [...] authors sometimes use exotic tropes to give the hero his hard edges. In constructing the figure of the Latin lover, for instance, authors can mobilize mainstream assumptions about machismo to signify alpha maleness. In Native American heroes, romance authors can mobilize the fierce warrior stereotype to make him alpha and draw on typical “noble savage” associations to craft his sensitive side for the heroine.
Desert romances fall roughly into this group of exoticized romance heroes, a group that notably excludes the black hero. [...] The persistence of what seems to be a separate but equal clause in mass-market romances speaks powerfully to both the unspoken presence of racial ideologies in the romance genre and the lingering potency of stereotypes about violent black masculinity. The balance between fantasy and reality that romance authors must strike manifests tellingly when it comes to race; nonwhite characters are either segregated or contained through various devices, while race appears in phantasmic ways. More often than not, authors use the “chromatic associations” of darkness and blackness in describing racially white heroes, thereby incorporating metaphors that are deeply embedded in racial logics of the global North. (896)
When one's a reader of a type of fiction about which sweeping negative generalisations are made, it can feel satisfying to respond with equally sweeping but positive generalisations. Some of those negative generalisations probably do deserve to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Others, though, contain rather more than a grain of truth and so, having recently come across a number of freshly written critiques of romance, I felt it was appropriate to share them here. is largely concerned with popular romance novels as a site of criticism for disability because of its widespread popularity and locates Victorian fiction such as Jane Eyre and Olive as the predecessors of modern romance novels. Stereotypes of disability that pervade Victorian literature tend to be present in the modern romance; characters desire cures for their disabilities and operate as pitiable figures within the courtship plot. I analyze the ways in which the disabled protagonists of Yours Until Dawn, Stranger in Town, and Annie's Song must be rehabilitated by their partners in order to be a viable participant in the courtship plot. For male characters, this involves reclamation of their masculinity in order to compensate for the feminization of their disability. Disabled female characters seem to have very little involvement in their own rehabilitation and instead rely on their male partners. In contrast, the heroine of Mouth to Mouth needs no rehabilitation in order to be seen as a sexual partner. Laurel represents a unique case that disability scholars should pay more critical attention to.Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any more detail about the thesis, other than that it was completed in 2012 at the University of Wyoming.
E.L. James [...] said [...] that the [Fifty Shades] trilogy is fantasy and portrays the sort of fantasy that people would not necessarily want in real life. We’ve heard this sort of explanation before as an apologia for the rapetastic bodicerippers of the 1970s and 1980s or for the continuing popularity of romances featuring ultra-possessive alpha males. And I cannot discount these explanations, because people have wildly different fantasies, as is their good right. But nonetheless, whenever I read another apologia that a book/film/series with stone age gender relations is just an expressions of women’s fantasies of ceding control, because they have to be so strong in real life all the time, I inevitably shake my head and think, “Whose fantasy exactly? Cause it sure as hell ain’t mine.”The third is from acrackedmoon at Requires Only That You Hate. The language is strong and I'm sure we could all think of romances which would serve as counter-examples. That doesn't invalidate her critique though: if anything, her "hatred and geekrage" seems to me to demonstrate the extent of the pain which romances can cause some people:
I guess the main problem here is that a lot of what is considered romantic and swoonworthy in the Anglo-American part of the world, not just doesn’t do a thing for me, I actively dislike it. And I only wrote Anglo-American, because E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, is British. But mainly, books like Fifty Shades of Grey or Harlequin Presents (which have several British authors as well) or the rapetastic bodicerippers of yesteryear are an American phenomenon and reflect the conflicted American attitudes about sexuality, namely that the only way a woman is allowed to enjoy sex without being labeled a slut is if she’s forced into it by an overpowering man. The old bodiceripper style romances were never as popular in Europe (including the UK) as in the US and most European readers I have spoken to actively hated them.
I don’t know about other queer women, but to me the prevalence of romance–not as a genre by itself, but romance as a pop-culture entity–fucked me up pretty severely [...] if you’re telling me that romance is categorically feminist, you’re contributing to this large damage in an insidious, silencing way. The proponents of romance-is-feminist school of thought like to pass such fiction off as inherently progressive because it is written mostly by women and targets women as an audience: it pushes the idea that reading these books is liberating and sex-positive and, what’s more, reading them is good for you. Because feminism! Liberation from the yoke of repression and sexual dissatisfaction!Acrackedmoon is aware of the existence of lesbian and m/m romance; there are romances about people other than straight white women from the first world. Just, not a lot of them. Taken as a whole, popular romance fiction does marginalise certain kinds of stories and certain kinds of protagonists.
Tell me this and I’ll kick you in the fucking teeth.
Yes, romance presents possibilities: as long as those possibilities involve finding a man. Yes, romance explores and depicts female desire: as long as that is a desire to have a cock shoved into your orifices. Yes, romance is about the “everywoman” whom we can all identify with as long as you can identify with a straight white woman from the first world. It reinforces the hegemony of what is normal, and what’s normal is straight sex, straight female desire, centering your life around the fantasy man, and being culturally rooted in the west. Romance enforces the hegemony of ethnocentricism, heteronormativity, and cultural imperialism. It’s not the only thing that does this: so does SFF, so does every other form of popular media.
The CARAS research conference at the Adler School of Psychology. This was a conference for therapists, social workers, psychologists, etc., to educate them to be kink-aware and kink-friendly. Sarah invited Annabel and me, as well as authors Heidi Cullinan, James Buchanan, and Edmond Manning, to speak on a panel about positive and realistic portrayals of BDSM in romantic fiction.
'The popular culture of romantic love in twentieth-century Australia'.
In western culture 'love' is commonly cited as the reason for cohabitation or marriage, yet 46% of marriages are likely to end in divorce in Australia today. This project examines how the culture of romantic love has changed in Australia over the course of the twentieth century as changing patterns of work and gender relations, consumerism, and the supplanting of spiritual ideals by sexuality and the cult of the body modified representations of love in literature, film, and periodicals. The popular discourse of romantic love has transformed expectations of love, placing different demands upon what it is supposed to achieve.
I'd like to include a link on the new resource guide described below. Queries and suggestions welcome: drpigeon@gmail.com
Contributions solicited for a proposed web resource focused on teaching English Literature at the college/university level.
Possible contributions include but are not limited to:
Deadline: July 15 for consideration for the initial launch of the site; on-going project, so contributions after that date will also be welcome. Please include a brief bio and contact info.
- Reviews of books, blogs and other resources
- Personal essays
- Sample Assignments and syllabi
- Course design and planning
- Incorporating technology successfully
- Hints and advice
- Suggestions for links
Ever had that moment where you wanted to read a romance novel you remembered enjoying years ago, but couldn't recall title or author's name?
RomQA is the place where you can share your memories of that novel to see if romance readers here could identify it for you.
8–9 November 2012, Senate House, University of London
The Marginalised Mainstream seeks to discuss the growing interest in and importance of mainstream culture and the popular as ways of engaging with cultural products of the late nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries (the long twentieth century), 1880–2010. Specifically, we seek to bring together postgraduate students, early career academics and established researchers working in the fields of Literature, Cultural Studies and elsewhere in the Humanities, to explore why mainstream culture and objects of mass appeal are so frequently marginalised by the academic community.
as reported by Dianna Dilworth on GalleyCat: Brevard County Public Libraries in Florida have pulled their 19 copies of 50 Shades of Grey from the shelves.
Why?
HuffPo has a quote from Don Walker, a spokesman for the library, who said, "it's semi-porgnographic." The HuffPo article indicated that several other libraries in Florida had refused to purchase copies, but Brevard bought 19, then took them out of circulation, sending notices to the 200 or so people on a waiting list.
Library services director Cathy Schweinsberg told Florida Today: Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”They may not have been asked to take it off the shelves in this particular instance, but Gaffney's thesis describes the socio-political context in which many US libraries make their decisions:
During the 1990s and 2000s, conservative activists not only appropriated libraries as battlegrounds for causes like antigay activism, but also incorporated libraries and librarianship into the issue base of the pro family movement. A collection of loosely linked, well-organized grassroots campaigns around issues like opposition to abortion and gay marriage, the pro family movement was a resurgence of conservative activism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that brought libraries into the culture wars crossfire. Pro family library challenges went beyond objections to particular materials in order to target library policies of open access, collection diversity, and patron privacy. Pro family activists also mounted an explicit critique of the American Library Association (ALA), opposing the ALA’s defenses of intellectual freedom for all ages and all types of media. These activists described their own struggle as a quest to wrest libraries away from the ALA and restore them to parental and taxpayer control.
Gaffney's thesis can be downloaded from the University of Illinois' digital environment for access to learning and scholarship (IDEALS). It focuses on young readers: "The reason their reading is monitored is, in part, because some adults believe the young are more vulnerable readers and will be irreparably harmed by 'dangerous' media without adult intervention" (5). Nonetheless, some of the metaphors invoked in debates about their reading are more widely applicable:
Catherine Sheldrick Ross’ analysis of turn-of-the-century library discourse on the “fiction question” reveals that there were two persistent metaphors used to describe reading: reading as eating, and reading as a ladder. The two metaphors helped librarians to establish their professional expertise as guiders and selectors of “healthy” reading, as well as to articulate a hierarchy or ladder of reading tastes. Sheldrick Ross’ study not only highlights a pivotal moment in the development of librarians’ emerging professional identity as reading experts, but also reveals that metaphors, far from being mere “stylistic flourishes,” are powerful ways of structuring our experience of the world as a way to “discover new meaning.” [...]It's not difficult to see how these metaphors would be applied to romances and romance readers and
Sheldrick Ross’ study has two key insights that inform pro family models of reading. In the case of the “reading is eating” metaphor, particularly when it is combined with the ladder metaphor to establish a hierarchy of taste, it is far easier to tell a tale of passive readers than of active ones. And passive readers are more likely to need monitoring and guidance: if reading is eating, and eating can be nutritious, bad, or downright poisonous, then readers (particularly vulnerable and inexperienced ones) will need help to discern the good from the junk. It is easy to see why the “reading is eating” metaphor is so prominent in pro family discourse. The second insight from Sheldrick Ross’ study is how reading metaphors are used to dismiss and demean reading (and eating) for pleasure. Along this ladder of taste, the closer reading materials were to pleasure for its own sake, the lower they were on the ladder. A similar hierarchy structures how pro family critics understand youth reading as an overwhelmingly didactic exercise, either ignoring pleasure and aesthetics as part of the experience of reading, or viewing them with suspicion. (9-10)
In “Reading is Not Eating,” an extension of her groundbreaking research in Reading the Romance, Radway analyzes the “reading is eating” metaphor in order to reveal its role in broader social and cultural critiques of mass media. The eating metaphor not only creates a hierarchy of taste—with the “nutritious” reading at the top and the “garbage” that is bad for one at the bottom—but also structures our understanding of media consumption in such a way that the only response to “bad” reading is censorship: if readers consume or are consumed by mass media, then the only way to save them from degradation is to stop destructive forms of media from being produced in the first place. The passivity that the eating metaphor suggests makes it more likely that critics of mass culture will focus on “objectionable materials” instead of “…actually looking at specific encounters between
audiences and mass cultural products.”
Radway’s study of romance readers and her critique of the “reading is eating” metaphor have important connections to the politics of youth reading. As with female romance readers, the eating metaphor has been used to simultaneously dismiss the agency of young readers, make pleasure suspect, and cast the popular and mass media as the villain of the educational piece. (12)
If you haven’t been living under a rock–or even if you have–you’ve probably heard of the book 50 Shades of Grey. It’s the BDSM erotic romance that has broken out into blockbuster status. It’s been on the Today Show, 20/20, and even Dr. Oz talked about it today. It’s everywhere [....] what’s getting REALLY old is the media’s portrayal of books “like that” being “mommy” porn. [...] But here’s the thing–why is it so scandalous that moms are reading sexy books? Once we procreate, are we relegated to being washed up women with used uteri (uteruses?) who are now supposed to focus on nothing but making the perfect lasagnas and singing choruses of Sesame Street songs with our kidlets?
In the Friends episode “The One with the Sharks,” aired in October 2002, one of the sitcom’s main characters, Monica Geller, catches her husband, Chandler, masturbating - apparently, while watching a shark documentary. Convinced that her partner is secretly into “shark porn,” Monica tries to accept and even re-enact his “perverse” desires - only to discover with quite some relief that Chandler just changed the channel when she came into the room and that he originally was getting off on “some regular […] old fashioned, American, girl-on-girl action.” [...] What I find particularly interesting in this scene is the naturalization of straight men watching “lesbian” porn. (1)
as in most cases, gender proves to be of crucial importance: Despite the fact that there actually exists a large number of pornographic and romantic texts about male homosexuality consumed and produced by American women since the 1970s, the “abnormality” of these female “cross-voyeurs” is constantly underlined in U.S. popular and academic culture. [...]In the academic publications on female “cross-voyeurs,” the application of “double standards” with regard to male/female “cross-voyeurism” is even more obvious. As Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse note in their “Introduction” to Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Internet (2006), slash fiction - fan fiction about male homosexual relationships mainly produced and consumed by women - has stood in the center of fan fiction studies so far, despite being merely a subgenre of it. The reason for this seems to be an urge to explain “the underlying motivations” for the fascination of women with m/m romance or pornography within the academic discourse (Busse and Hellekson 17) - a trend which differs completely from the extremely under-theorized complex of men interested in “lesbians.” Similar to those tendencies, a genre of Japanese manga called Boys’ Love - also concerned with gay men and directed at females - has equally received a disproportionately large attention in U.S. research papers in reaction to its growing popularity in North America since the late 1990s in the context of the “Japanification” of U.S. culture (Levi, “North American” 147; McLelland and Yoo 3). By concentrating on possible reasons for Japanese and American women to read and write these manga, the Japanese and American papers (Kamm 45-66) once again emphasize the oddness of those female “cross-voyeurs” - suggesting a “Never-ending Story” of over-theorizing and overanalyzing them. (2-3)
As a teenager, I loved to read romance, but the underlying message was deleterious to my self-image-you have to fit into a certain mold to find love. When I was young, only traditionally beautiful white women were desirable in the world of romance novels. The fact that there are all types of black women portrayed now in a realistic and non-stereotypical fashion is a huge move forward. So, I'm pleased to have a part in AA romance's emergence as a viable entity. Finally major publishers have got it straight that black folks do have romance and enjoy reading about it as much as the average American. (Romance in Color)
In 1994, Kensington Publishing came out with the first black romance novel line. I’d been turned off romance before because it seemed to be a rule in the industry that black folks didn’t have romance, at least en masse. I was very excited about the new line. I had surgery and was off work (I’m an RN). I wrote MIDNIGHT BLUE with a sister having hot romance, just for that line. (LaConnie Taylor-Jones' blog)
That book, MIDNIGHT BLUE, was produced as a BET television movie of the week in 2000. Nine novels, and eight novellas and short stories later from that first book, she’s a national bestselling author (says so on the books). (Monica's website)
It's exciting when a writer gets The Call from an editor. In many ways the call is only the beginning of an angsty rollercoaster for any novelist. But if you're a black, you have a special ride reserved just for you.Monica had both talent and determination.
Writing romance while black means you get a sub-genre of your very own - no matter what the content of your novel. Your special niche is already measured and the boundaries are set on your readership. Your marketing will likely be different than the white author in your chapter, even where your books are shelved in some bookstores. If you decided to attend book signings and other events with your white colleagues, the difference of your reception and audience will be thrown into stark relief.
Because since you're black, you're a romance writer that the majority of romance readers will never read. Your readership is defined and limited to only black romance readers by a variety of circumstances outside your control, so your opportunities are far smaller than any white romance writer from the moment you were published, regardless of your talent and determination. (All About Romance)
as Bennett listened to his wife tell Wyn the story of Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, he was surprised and dismayed to discover how much the ancient legend related to their situation.
In her most dramatic tone, Caroline spun the tale for their enthralled little son. 'Once she had forced him to wed her, the hideous creature told Sir Gawain she was a fair damsel who had been placed under a terrible enchantment. By marrying her, he had broken half the curse. She could be beautiful by day so that all the world would honour and envy him for possessing so fine a wife. But alone with him at night she would be monstrous ugly. Or she could be repulsive by day and beautiful by night so that he alone could admire and love her.' [...]
'Which one did Sir Gawain choose, Mama?' [...]
'I'm glad you asked. [...] It was not easy for Sir Gawain to decide. He considered how each of those choices would affect him. Then his heart was moved with pity for what the Loathly Lady had suffered. He said he would let the decision be hers. [...] No sooner had Sir Gawain spoken those words,' Caroline continued, 'than there was a flash of sparking light and the Loathly Lady transformed into the most beautiful maiden he had ever beheld. She told him that by permitting her to choose her own fate he had freed her from the spell entirely. Now she would be beautiful all the time. Wasn't that lovely?' (313-15)
