Saturday, December 24, 2016

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


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

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

New to the Wiki: Islands in Romance, YA, NA, Crusie's Buildings, Military Romance, the British Empire.


Crane, Ralph and Lisa Fletcher, 2016. 
The Genre of Islands: Popular Fiction and Performative Geographies.” Island Studies Journal 11.2 (2016): 637-650.
Gillis, Bryan and Joanna Simpson, 2015. 
Sexual Content in Young Adult Literature: Reading between the Sheets (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield). [See Chapter 6 on "Sexual Content in Young Adult Romance".] Excerpt
 
Gleason, William, 2016. 
"The Inside Story: Jennifer Crusie and the Architecture of Love." Popular Fiction and Spatiality: Reading Genre Settings. Ed. Lisa Fletcher. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 79-93. Excerpt Abstract
Kitchen, Veronica, 2016. 
"Veterans and Military Masculinity in Popular Romance Fiction." Critical Military Studies. Abstract
Teo, Hsu-Ming, 2016. 
"Imperial Affairs: The British Empire and the Romantic Novel, 1890-1939", New Directions in Popular Fiction: Genre, Distribution, Reproduction, ed. Ken Gelder. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 87-110. Excerpt
 
Tienkamp, Aaf, 2016. 
"New Adult Romance: An Emerging Genre." Master’s Dissertation Literary Studies. Programme: Writing, Editing and Mediating, University of Groningen.


Monday, December 05, 2016

Deadline Extended: Francis Award ($250 USD + Publication)

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) is has extended the deadline for the Conseula Francis Award for the best unpublished essay on popular romance media and / or the logics, institutions, and social practices of romantic love in global popular culture. Submissions must now be received by Friday, January 6, 2017.  The winning essay will receive a $250 USD cash prize and be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Popular Romance Studies, pending any needed revision according to the judges’ comments.

Essays submitted for the Francis Award may focus on work in any medium (e.g., fiction, film, TV, music, comics, or advice literature) or on topics related to real-world courtship, dating, relationships, and love. Conseula Francis’s work on popular romance fiction focused on African American authors and representations of Black love, and priority for the Francis Award will be given to manuscripts that address the diversity of, and diversities within, popular romance and romantic love culture: e.g., diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class, sexuality, disability, or age.

All submissions should be sent to Erin Young, Managing Editor of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, at managing.editor@jprstudies.org. Please put “Francis Award” in your subject line. All submissions must be Microsoft Word documents, with citations in MLA format; in keeping with JPRS publication guidelines we will consider essays of 5000 to ~10,000 words in length. Please remove your name or the name of any co-authors from the submitted manuscript; in your cover-letter email, please provide your contact information (address, phone number, e-mail address) and a 150-200 word abstract of the submission.

The judges for the Francis Award will be a mix of established and emerging scholars in the field of Popular Romance Studies, chosen by IASPR. The award winner will be announced in April, 2017; each year’s winner will be invited to join the panel of judges for the following year.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

CFP: International Seminar on Linguistic and Cultural Others in Romance

International Seminar on
LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN CONTACT IN THE ROMANCE NOVEL


UNIVERSIDAD DE LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA
(Canary Islands, Spain)
June 21st-23rd 2017

Romance novels have often been dismissed by critics because of their nature as a popular genre and for being written and read largely by women. However, in the last decade a number of scholars have approached the study of the romance novel with critical rigor and avoiding the condescending treatment of previous analyses. Quite often in romance novels we encounter characters that have very different backgrounds: come from different countries and cultures, speak different languages, belong to very different social strata or are, in some other way, an “Other” to the rest of the characters and/or the intended readers. This International Seminar invites proposals in which the main characters or other important characters in the text can be considered as “Other”, with special consideration given to linguistic and cultural others. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

-       English-language novels that take place in the Canary Islands or other Atlantic /Caribbean islands
-       Paradise discourse
-       Cross-cultural clashes
-       Languages in contact: codeswitching and/or language mixing
-       Bilingualism, biculturalism and identity
-       Metalinguistic references and/or speech representation
-       The “Other” as a romance hero or heroine
-       Gender discourses

This International Seminar is organized by the “Discourse, Gender & Identity” Project Group (grant FFI2014-53962-P, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and the Research Team “Sociolinguistic & Sociocultural Studies” working at the ULPGC Department of Modern Languages. We invite proposals for paper presentations which must be sent as an email attachment by January 31st 2017 to isabel.gonzalezcruz@ulpgc.es

Abstracts will not exceed 350 words (excluding the references) and will outline the topic to be discussed in 20-minute sessions followed by ten minutes for discussion. The following details should also be provided in the abstract: 1) Title of paper 2) Name and affiliation of each author 3) email address of each author 4) between 3 and 5 keywords.

All proposals will be reviewed within four weeks of submission. The main language of the Seminar will be English but presentations in Spanish will also be considered.

Further information about registration, accommodation and details about publication of selected papers will be provided shortly in a second call for papers.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Call for Papers: US-UK Romance


Love Across the Atlantic:

An Interdisciplinary Conference on US-UK Romance 
 
Friday June 16 2017, Centre for Research in Film & Audiovisual Cultures, University of Roehampton, London

Organised in conjunction with New College, University of Alabama
Keynote Speakers: Professors Karen Randell & Alexis Weedon, University of Bedfordshire
In 1946 when Winston Churchill referred to the ‘special relationship’ between the USA and Britain in his ‘Sinews of Peace’ address, he was referring to the close political, economic, and military alliance between the two nations - a relationship that had become especially entwined and enhanced in the second world war, but which has a much longer history preceding this. Alongside and throughout the cultural history of this alliance there have always existed US-UK ‘special relationships’ of another kind – love affairs carried out across the expanse of the Atlantic, as British and American citizens have flirted, courted and fallen in love, with one another but often too with the idea(l) of that other place across the ocean. US-UK love affairs have thus proven to be a mainstay of romantic narratives for generations, shared across film, television, literature and all the arts. This interdisciplinary conference is dedicated to exploring some of the history, manifestations and enduring appeal of these relationships: what are the economic and ideological factors that have fuelled this romantic framework; what have been its recurrent tropes across disciplinary, national and temporal boundaries; and how does the notion of ‘love across the Atlantic’ speak to our collective fantasies of home, desire, escape and identity?
Topics may include, but are not limited to:

- American anglophilia/fascination with Englishness
- Working Title’s romantic comedies, and other US-UK film collaborations
- Colonial love, romance, and conquest
- Transatlantic fandoms
- US-UK celebrity romances
- TV series themed around transatlantic relationships and characters (e.g. NY-LON, You’re The Worst, Cuckoo)
- Wartime love stories and ‘GI Brides’
- American literary and artistic expatriates (e.g. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, J.A.M. Whistler, John Singer Sargent, etc.)
- Literary and genre fiction depictions/explorations of transatlantic love and romance


Abstracts of up to 300 words along with a short biog should be submitted to Deborah Jermyn at d.jermyn@roehampton.ac.uk and Catherine Roach at croach@ua.edu  by December 1.
Pre-constituted panels of 3-4 speakers (20 min papers) are also welcomed. Notifications will be sent out by mid-January

Sunday, October 23, 2016

New to the Wiki: Mary Renault, Louise Mack, Virginity and Sexuality


Egan, Jesi, 2016. 
'Cultural Futurity and the Politics of Recovery: Mary Renault's Ambivalent Romances.' MFS Modern Fiction Studies 62.3: 462-80. Abstract
 
Fekete, Maleah, 2016. 
"Social Differences in Taste: Investigating Romance Reading." 2016 SURF Conference Proceedings [This is a conference paper but outlines the direction of a larger project in which the student is attempting to assess whether Radway's findings about readers looking to romance for nurturance were ever correct by speaking to modern readers (many of whom are reading books with similar elements to those preferred by Radway's readers). The student concludes that Radway was wrong and "the real reason women read is to feel sexually self-actualized - that is, reach their highest potential as sexually active women". However, given that this explanation does not explain the existence of a market for "sweet" romances, I feel it must be a generalisation which should not be assumed to apply to all romance readers.]
Gelder, Ken and Rachael Weaver, 2010. 
"Louise Mack and Colonial Pseudo Literature." Southerly 70.2: 82-95.
 
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, 2004. 
“Virginity Always Comes Twice: Virginity and Profession, Virginity and Romance.” Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars. Eds. Louise D’Arcens and Juanita Feros Ruys. Turnhout: Brepols. 335-69.


Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Calls for Papers: Science Fiction/Fantasy and Romance; Romance, Fans, and Fan Fiction

Two calls for papers, one from the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (looking for papers about science fiction/fantasy) and the other from Transformative Works and Cultures (seeking papers on romance fans and romance fanworks).

The Romance of Science Fiction / Fantasy

Deadline: January 1, 2017

Whether we consider romance novels incorporating elements of the fantastic, the future, or the alien, or works of Science Fiction/Fantasy exploring love, desire, and other aspects of romantic culture, the relationship between these genres has been enduring and productive. Following up on a series of joint panels at the 2016 national conference of the Popular Culture Association, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies calls for papers for a special issue on the intersections between romance and science fiction/fantasy in fiction (including fan fic), film, TV, and other media, now and in the past, from anywhere in the world.  This special issue will be guest edited by Gillian I. Leitch, PCA co-chair for SF/Fantasy, and Erin Young.
Contributions might consider questions like the following, either in terms of particular texts (novels, films, TV shows, etc.) or in terms of genre, audience, and media history:
  • How has the intersection of these two popular genres opened up new possibilities in conceptualizing gender, desire, sexuality, love, courtship, or relationship structure, not just recently, but since the earliest years of SF/Fantasy?
  • How has their intersection allowed us to see existing concepts of gender, desire, sexuality, love, courtship, and relationship structure in fresh or critical ways?
  • How have authors, filmmakers, producers, and fans played these genres against one another, for example by using romance to critique traditions in SF/F, or SF/F to critique the tropes of romance?  How has this counterpoint been explored by authors, filmmakers, producers, and fans of color, or by LBGTQIA creators and audiences?
  • How might reading classics of SF/F as romance change our perception of them: works like Dune and the Witch World novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, or even E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series, which are threaded on a tale of eugenic love?
  • What happens to works of paranormal, futuristic, or time-travel romance when we read them through the lenses provided by SF/Fantasy Studies?
  • What happens when teaching works of SF/Fantasy and popular romance? How do these genres co-exist or compete in pedagogical experience or classroom practice?
  • How do works of SF/Fantasy and popular romance coexist and interact in library ecosystems? What issues arise in terms of collection development, readers advisory, or community engagement?
Papers of between 5,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography, should be sent to Erin Young (managing.editor@jprstudies.org). To facilitate blind peer review, please remove your name and other identifying information from the manuscript.  Submissions should be Microsoft Word documents, with citations in MLA format.

Special Issue CFP: Romance/Fans: Sexual Fantasy, Love, & Genre in Fandom (3/1/17; 3/15/18)

 

Romance is one of the most beloved genres of media around the world. Catherine Roach describes fans of romance fiction as ‘ludic readers... who read for play and pleasure’ (2016, 32). According to Roach, romance fandom is both ‘intensely private, as the reading experience can be, but also powerfully communitarian’ (32). Despite the popularity of romance media, romance fandoms remain relatively unaddressed within fan studies. Traditionally, the relationship between “shipping” and romance has been cast as either oppositional or ambivalent. Catherine Driscoll argues that romance “generally appears as a mute field” in studies of fan fiction (2006, 82). Romance is framed as a force that sexually explicit fan fiction responds to or acts against. This framework has a tendency to privilege certain fan works and overgeneralize popular romance genres.

This special issue aims to examine the romance/fan relationship from three directions. First, we seek to examine the relationship between fan works and romantic storytelling today. How do we theorize the flow of works, authors, and audiences between contemporary fandoms and commercial romance genres? By examining romantic texts and their producers, how might we reconsider the rich dynamism of romantic aesthetics and tropes across cultures, national contexts, and media? Next, we want to explore what constitutes a romance fan or romance fandom. What is a romance fan/fandom and how are they positioned in relation to other fan networks? Finally, we want to consider the figure of the romance fan and its construction. How do discourses depicting fans as overly romantic and hysterical frame our understandings of romance and romance fandom? How are fans able to resist these characterizations?

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
* Romance and fan fiction; the application of terms like romance, erotica, erotic-romance, and pornography to fan works.
* The creation, curation, and sharing of visual media (e.g., fan vids and gifs; memes; manips) in romance fandoms.
* The role of sexually explicit materials in romantic fan works.
* Book clubs and reading the romance.
* Romance fan field trips, gatherings, and conventions.
* Shipping and anti-shipping practices in fandoms.
* Romance anti-fandom.
* Social media practices in romance fandoms (e.g., the use of Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook).
* Social activism in online romance fandoms.
* Romance fandom and the event (e.g., comic cons, book releases, movie premiers).
* Teens and youth cultures in romance fandom.
* The figure of the fangirl and “fangirling” as excessively romantic.
* Representations of romance fandom (e.g., in reviews/articles, on screen, in print, online).

Submission guidelines

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) is an international peer-reviewed online Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing.

Theory: Conceptual essays. Peer review, 6,000–8,000 words.

Praxis: Case study essays. Peer review, 5,000–7,000 words.

Symposium: Short commentary. Editorial review, 1,500–2,500 words.

Please visit TWC's Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact—Contact guest editor Katherine Morrissey, Athena Bellas, and Eric Selinger with any questions or inquiries at romancefans[AT]katiedidnt.net.

Due date—March 1, 2017, for estimated March 2018 publication.

Monday, October 10, 2016

How to Apply for the RWA Academic Research Grant 2017



 

Academic Research Grant


Romance Writers of America announces its twelfth annual Academic Research Grant competition. The grant program seeks to develop and support academic research devoted to genre romance novels, writers and readers. Appropriate fields of specialization include, but are not limited to: anthropology, communications, cultural studies, education, English language and literature, gender studies, linguistics, literacy studies, psychology, rhetoric, and sociology. 

Proposals in interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary studies are welcome. RWA does not fund creative work (such as novels or films).The ultimate goal of proposals should be significant publication in major journals or as a monograph from an academic press.

Eligibility

The RWA Academic Research Grant Program is open to faculty at accredited colleges and universities, independent scholars with significant publication records, and dissertation candidates who have completed all course work and qualifying exams. No candidate need be a member of RWA.

Scholars who have won an RWA grant may apply again, for a new project, beginning the fourth year after receiving the award. The application must include evidence of the completion and publication of the first funded project.

Funding and Deadlines

RWA will fund one or more grants up to a total of $5,000. Funds will be calculated and awarded in U.S. dollars. Individual applicants may request up to the total amount.

Completed applications are to be submitted to RWA via online form and hard copy format by December 1, 2016.

Decisions will be announced in March 2017.

Tenure: April 1, 2017, through March 31, 2018.

For a complete grant description and application instructions, write to grants@rwa.org or visit the Awards section of the RWA website.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Links: Me in Sheffield, New Work, Conference Reminder


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 1http://pcaaca.org/romance/

Saturday, September 03, 2016

Incarcerated Women, Mary Balogh, a Symposium Synopsis and Mills & Boon on the Happy Ending


I've got four items to mention today: a PhD in progress which suggests that historical romance fiction can empower incarcerated women, a review of a Mary Balogh novel which turns into a much broader analysis of romance fiction, a summary of a symposium and news of some "tongue-in-cheek" Mills & Boon (non-romance) publications.

------------------

Margaret Jamieson is working on
a non-traditional PhD study that involves writing a historical romance novel and accompanying exegesis, where the main aim is to show how oppressed women (some incarcerated) can become empowered through both reading historical romance novels and engaging with the heroines in these novels. In this context, oppression refers to women who perceive themselves to be isolated from opportunities, and disadvantaged by feelings of inadequacy and domination by patriarchal structures. (155-156)
What makes this particularly interesting is that Margaret seems to be basing this at least partially on personal experience:
As a mature student, Margaret knew she could draw on her life's experience as part of the methodology used in preparing the novel and exegesis. Her vision in starting this journey was underpinned by wanting to show fellow incarcerated women that study was possible, and particularly that reading historical romance novels was enjoyable and empowering. The power in the historical romance resides in its representation of the empowered heroines who subvert traditional expectations of women's roles in marriage and in society. (158)
Having lived with other incarcerated women, the student observed the helplessness that they felt. Many of these women said they would appreciate female role models whom they could both relate to and be inspired by. Many of these women also had a poor understanding of literature or indeed reading. The student believed that by introducing the historical romance novel to these women, it would provide an easy read with a positive outcome on their self-esteem. The historical romance novel can take a lonely isolated woman to a place where she can find companionship and beauty. So this premise was the basis for her research aims. (162)
the student reached a deeper understanding of the difficulties experienced by women in colonial Australia. As her novel developed around the obstacles that her characters experienced, she came to realize that some aspects regarding gender inequality have not changed over time. (166)

The PhD is not yet available to read because it "is still in progress" (156) but Margaret herself is now "free from incarceration" (159).


Danaher, Mike and Margaret Jamieson. “On Manoeuvre: Navigating Practice-Led Methodology in a Creative Writing PhD for the First Time.” Constructing Methodology for Qualitative Research: Researching Education and Social Practices. Ed. Bobby Harreveld, Mike Danaher, Celeste Lawson, Bruce Allan Knight and Gillian Busch. London: Palgrave, 2016. 155-169. [Excerpt via Google Books.]

------------------
Rohan Maitzen's review of Mary Balogh's Only Beloved includes plenty of observations about the romance genre as a whole. For example:
The happy ending is fundamental to the genre: it’s what readers expect and what they know the books will deliver. But such positivity, especially when presented in an unapologetically feminized form of popular fiction, does not get taken seriously. At least since the heyday of Modernism in the early 20th century, with its credo “make it new,” more literary value has attached to writing that upsets, rather than satisfies, expectations; more prestige has belonged to unfamiliarity and its discontents than to the pleasures of getting, even vicariously, exactly what you want.

------------------
Lucy Sheerman's written a report on the PGCWWN symposium on "Representations of Romantic Relationships and the Romance Genre in Contemporary Women’s Writing" which was held in Sheffield in 11 June. I wrote a summary of the various papers here but Sheerman's report goes into more depth about the relationship between shame, romance-reading and fire, suggesting that "It seems that the idea of shame is rooted in the earliest origins of and attitudes to romantic fiction".

------------------
Mills & Boon, in another departure from romance novels
is to launch a series of "Modern Girl's Guides" containing "vital advice every woman needs to survive the modern world".
Tongue-in-cheek guides to working and drinking will be published in November, with more titles to follow. (BBC)
Apparently they're using "fabulous archive photos" so presumably they won't be drawing on their archive of vintage covers again, as they did with their colouring book for adults. I'm most interested in the fourth book in the series: The Mills & Boon Modern Girl's Guide to Happy Endings. Are they planning to mock an essential part of their own novels? I'll have to wait until January to find out.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

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.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Events in Australia, England and the US


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

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

New to the Romance Wiki Bibliography and other links


Eric's had a post published as part of Read-a-Romance Month. Among other things, he discusses the importance of teaching romance fiction in universities:
To keep romance novels out of the classroom is to teach students there’s something radically unworthy about both these books and their readers. Sometimes it’s not even subtle. I had a senior colleague, now retired, who used to ask his intro to literature students if they’d ever read a Harlequin romance, and if anyone raised her hand—and it was usually a “her,” as you might expect—he’d say, in a withering tone, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” I had a student—a junior, a philosophy major, in our honors program—who couldn’t bring herself to buy the books for my seminar. “It’s just too embarrassing,” she told me. “I’m not the kind of person who reads books like these.”

I teach my classes for students who already love romance, and finally get the chance to say so. I teach my classes for students who’ve never thought about the genre, but are willing to give it a go. But most of all, I teach romance for students like that philosophy major: the students who think—or who’ve been told—that they’re too gifted, too jaded, too literary, too skeptical, too smart; too happily single, or married, or poly; too feminist, too radical, too queer, too male, and so on, to bother with “books like these.”
You can read the rest here. Jen Lois and Joanna Gregson, sociologists working on romance fiction, have also written a post for this month and it can be found here.

Amy Burge took romance scholarship to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a one-off show this afternoon. It went well but since it's not scheduled to be repeated, for anyone who's in Edinburgh and wants to see a performance about romance novels Amy recommends Charlotte Gallagher's "Carlotta de Galleon - A Fool for Love!"

The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love have a new blog, featuring interviews and updates on recent research.

New to the Romance Wiki Bibliography

Allan, Jonathan A., 2016. 
Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus. Regina: University of Regina Press. [See chapter 3, "Topping from the Bottom: Anne Tenino's Frat Boy and Toppy". A review of the book by Catherine M. Roach has been published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies]
 
Crawford, Joseph, 2014. 
The Twilight of the Gothic? Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance, 1991-2012. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014. [See also María T. Ramos-García's review of this book in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies]
 
Kahn, Laurie, director, 2015. 
Love Between the Covers. Blueberry Hill Productions. [This is a documentary about popular romance fiction and a review of it by Beth Driscoll was published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.]
 
McAlister, Jodi, 2016. 
'“You and I are humans, and there is something complicated between us”: Untamed and queering the heterosexual historical romance', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 5.2 (15 July 2016). [Focuses on Anna Cowan's Untamed (2013). A short response to this article can be found here.]
Wilkins, Kim, 2016. 
'“Ravished by Vikings”: The Pre-modern and the Paranormal in Viking Romance Fiction', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 5.2 (15 July 2016).

Friday, July 15, 2016

Award Created in Memory of Conseula Francis



The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) is proud to announce the creation of a new essay award in honor and memory of our colleague Conseula Francis. The winning essay will receive a $250 USD cash prize and be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Popular Romance Studies, pending any needed revision according to the judges’ comments.

The Francis Award is for the best unpublished essay on popular romance media and / or the logics, institutions, and social practices of romantic love in global popular culture.  Essays may focus on work in any medium (e.g., fiction, film, TV, music, comics, or advice literature) or on topics related to real-world courtship, dating, relationships, and love.

Conseula Francis’s work on popular romance fiction focused on African American authors and representations of Black love, and priority for the Francis Award will be given to manuscripts that address the diversity of, and diversities within, popular romance and romantic love culture: e.g., diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class, sexuality, disability, or age.

More details here.

Saturday, July 02, 2016

News Roundup: CFP, items added to the Romance Wiki and more


I haven't posted links for a while so this is a very, very long post. It covers a lot of areas, including items I've added to the Romance Wiki and calls for papers.

Romance readings:

Amy Burge will be at the Edinburgh Fringe (16 August) leading a session about romance writing.

Ali Williams has launched the CatRom Project, "an exploration of the way in which category romances address and engages with social issues. Its primary objective is to create a collection of analysis of individual novels, as well as interviews with authors and editors within the genre on the subject of issues within category romance."

Evangeline Holland has posted a paper on "Pistols and Petticoats: How Women Write the West", which is a reading of Western focused on Jezebel by Katherine Sutcliffe (1997), Fair Is the Rose by Meagan McKinney (1993), and Fall From Grace by Megan Chance (1997). She finds that
In the Western romance, as presented by female writers for a primarily female audience, the frontier myth is strong, particularly Turner’s thesis that the West was “‘free land’ into which the pioneers moved [and] was available for the taking, and that American progress began with a regenerative retreat to the primitive, followed by a recapitulation of the stages of civilization.” (White) All three novels end in some degree on a farm, with little interrogation as to how it is be acquired, but with the implication that it—domesticity through landownership and homesteading—is necessary for a believable romantic ending.
Romance Documentary update:

"LOVE BETWEEN THE COVERS was selected as the #1 choice of all 2015 videos by the American Library Association's Booklist Review".

Calls for Papers:
  • Black Love: A Symposium The 80th Anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. University of Kansas, September 14-16, 2017. The organisers "invite scholars, writers, and artists to reflect upon Black Love—its history, its reiterations, and its futurity—at a symposium to be held at the University of Kansas" and the "Symposium presentations may cover, but are not limited to, the following topics" of which the first is "Romance novels". More details here.
  • Lesbian Lives Conference 2017: Lesbian Love/s. University of Brighton, UK, 24-25 February 2017. Dr Olu Jenzen (University of Brighton) specially forwarded details of the conference to romance scholars so it's clear that our participation would be welcome. More details here.
  • The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 12-15 April 2017, at the Westin Hotel in Seattle. Panel session for SPSL, to be held as part of the group meeting program of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. Papers on any topic related to the philosophy of sex and love are welcome. More details here.

Jo Beverley (in memoriam):

News of Jo Beverley's death on 23 May was met with great sadness by members of the romance community, including the Romance Writers of America, her colleagues and readers at the Word Wenches blog, and individual authors such as Lynne Connolly.

Academic articles:
Morton, Leith, 2016. 
"The reinvention of romance: The rewriting, reception and censorship of 'ninjobon' in modern Japan." Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 47: 85-115. Abstract
Radick, Caryn, 2016. 
"Romance Writers’ Use of Archives." Archivaria, the Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists 81: 45-73. Abstract

Tanner, David, 2016. 
“Literary Success and Popular Romantic Fiction: Ethel M. Dell, a Case Study.” The Book World: Selling and Distributing British Literature, 1900-1940. Ed. Nicola Wilson. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 83-94. Excerpt
Thierauf, Doreen, 2016. 
“Forever After: Desire in the 21st-Century Romance Blockbuster.” Journal of Popular Culture 49.3: 604-26. Excerpt. [As I've mentioned before, I don't tend to add items about Fifty and Twilight to the Romance Wiki. They're kind of a phenomenon in their own right, though obviously they do have a romance at their centres. This article really disappointed me because it only looks at Twilight, Fifty Shades and a Pride and Prejudice fan fic but nonetheless draws sweeping conclusions about popular romance fiction, such as "Romance’s generic requirement that the hero should be volatile in his affections and sexually intimidating is brought to its logical conclusion in these series" (618). This is not a "generic requirement" of romance: the author would have done better to limit their conclusions to Twilight and Fifty.]
Dissertation/thesis:

Morrissey, Katherine, "Romance Networks: Aspiration & Desire in Today’s Digital Culture" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1179. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

In the media:

Lee, Jenny, 2016. 'Ballymena Mills & Boone author on the world of romance', The Irish News, 13 June 2016. [About Lynne Graham, whose 100th Mills & Boon was published this year] 

Mumford, Tracy, 2016. 'Who is reading romance novels?', MPR News, 13 June 2016. [Nielson statistics on romance readers in 2014/15] 

Thurston, Robert W., 2016. 'Ordinary People Learn History from Teachers, Movies, and This', History News Network, 12 June 2016. [About the historical content in historical romances]

Friday, July 01, 2016

Romances in Ladino


Eric just re-tweeted an announcement about the republication of some romances in Ladino.

Below are two of the original covers, which are in the collection of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.


Seventeen of these little pamphlets were among the books donated by the family of Israël-Salvator Révah (1917-1973). They're works of popular romantic fiction, written in Ladino (the language of Sephardi Jews, which is very similar to medieval Castilian/Spanish) and published in Istanbul between 1930 and 1933. [Images and details from eSepharad.com]

Karen Gerson Şarhon is responsible for the republication of the works by the
Sentro Sefaradi de Estambol. They'll be publishing 16 of them, at a rate of 3 every month and a half. The first three (pictured at the very top of this page) are: El Amor de Antonyo por su Mujer (by Moiz Habib), La Ermoza Janeta entre dos Amantes (by Eliya Gayus) and El Amor de Matilda kon dos Jovenes (by Moiz Habib). Anyone interested in obtaining copies should write to: sephardiccenter@gmail.com [Details from Salom]

Thursday, June 02, 2016

Changes at IASPR

--Eric Selinger

After a three-year term, Pamela Regis is stepping down from her position as President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR). 

Much of Pam’s work over the past three years has focused on securing the financial stability and non-profit / charitable status of IASPR, and in addition to her ongoing scholarly work, she will continue to serve the organization as Treasurer. 

She will be succeeded as President by Eric Murphy Selinger, who also serves as Executive Editor of IASPR’s peer-reviewed open-access publication, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies. 

Other changes in the IASPR leadership will be announced in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, all of us in Team IASPR / JPRS look forward to welcoming romance scholars from around the world at the Sixth International Conference on Popular Romance later this month in Salt Lake City!

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Conference Programme for the 6th International IASPR Conference (23-25 June 2016)


The full conference programme is now available here. Among the papers are:

Elin Abrahamsson, Stockholm University, Sweden:
“Consuming Passions: a queer reading of the popular romance genre through the concept of masturbation”

Katherine Morrissey, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York:
“Keeping It Classy: Studying Sex and Romance”

Len Barot, Bold Strokes Books, New York:
“Diversity in Lesbian Romance Fiction: The Impact of Gender and Race on Marketing and Sales”

Heather Schell, George Washington University, DC:
Two Nerdy History Girls: Historical Romance Novelists as Teachers of History”

Caryn Radick, Rutgers University, New Jersey:
“Writing about History and Becoming Part of the Historical Record: Romance Writers’ Use of Archives and Archival Collections Documenting Popular Romance”

Jessica Matthews, George Mason University, Virginia:
“Romance as Propaganda: White Fantasy of Indian Love in the 19th –century ‘Civilize the American Indian’ Movement”

Javaria Farooqui, Institute of Information Technology, Lahore, Pakistan:
“‘Raging Seas and Cloudy Skies’: Macro to Meso Level Psychosemantic Movement in Stephanie Laurens’ Black Cobra Quartet

Erin Young, SUNY Empire State College, New York:
“Love in the Last Frontier: An Analysis of Alaskan Romance Novels”

Margot Blankier, Trinity College, Dublin:
“‘The Sweetest Story Ever Told’: ‘Cinderella’ as American Dream Narrative”

Pavla Stefanska, Masavyk University, Czech Republic:
“Blurring the Lines: Irish mythology and symbolism in Nora Roberts’ The Cousin O’Dwyer’s Trilogy

Eric Murphy Selinger, DePaul University, Chicago:
“‘Use Heart in Your Search’: Erotic Faith, the Heart Sutra, and the Allusive Art of My Beautiful Enemy

Jayashree Kamble, Assist. Prof. of English, City University of New York:
“Epistemes and Cultural Dominants: What Popular Romance Novels’ Heroes and Heroines Tell Us About Postmodernity”

Lesley Ann Smith, Curtin, University, Australia:
“Understanding the Formula”

Maryan Wherry, Independent Scholar & Writer, Quad-Cities, Illinois:
“Love and the American Dream in Popular Romance”

Amy Burge, Edinburgh University, Scotland:
“‘Shipping magnates and oil sheikhs’: Decoding the exotic hero in ‘Harlequin Presents’ romance novels, 2000-2015”

Kecia Ali, Boston University:
“Triangulating Desire: Navigating Islamland, Arabiastan, and Romancelandia in Suzanne Brockmann’s Into the Night

Sarah Ficke, Marymount University, Virginia:
“When Vampires Meet Clockwork: Fantasy Creatures in Steampunk Romance”

Maria-Isabel González-Cruz, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain:
“Intercultural and interlingual relations in a corpus of popular romance fiction novels”

Mallory Jagodzinski, Bowling Green State University, Ohio:
“Playing Tricks: Neoliberalism, Postfeminism, and Postraciality in Theresa Romain’s Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress”

Hsu-Ming Teo, Macquarie University, Australia:
“When a Jew loves a Nazi: Romance novels and the Holocaust”

Amira Jarmakani, San Diego State University:
“Radioactive Love: Mapping Desire from Agrabah to Abbottabad”

Jonathan Allan, Brandon University, Canada:
“What is the Ever After doing in Happily Ever After? Temporality and Futurity”

Maria Ramos-Garcia, South Dakota State University:
“Creating the Sense of an Ending in Urban Fantasy”

Friday, May 20, 2016

Romance Miscellany: Online, In the Media, In Journals/Academic Volumes


On the Internet:

Bornschein, Anne N. 'The Stars (and bars): race and racism in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Chicago Stars series'.

Horne, Jackie C. reviews Catherine M. Roach's Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Linda. Review of Rita-nominated Toward the Sunrise by Elizabeth Camden at Smart Bitches Trashy Books ["unfortunately, underneath the charming plot ... was a backbone of unremitting Orientalism and historical revisionism."]

In the Media:

Anonymous, 2016. 'Roberta Gellis (1927-2016): Obituary'.

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Roberta Gellis (1927 - 2016)

Obituary

Bilde, Marie, 2016. 'It’s Springtime for Romance in Denmark', Publishing Perspectives, April 25, 2016. ["Romantic fiction in Copenhagen has mainly lived in kiosks alongside magazines — until now. As April smiles on Denmark, new imprints are bringing romance into the open."]

Owen, Jonathan, 2016. 'Gransnet jumps into bed with racy publisher Mills & Boon for content partnership', Campaign, May 03, 2016. ['Romantic publisher Mills & Boon and the website Gransnet have announced what they call a "budding romance", and will begin working together to capitalise on the interest of older women in sex and romance.']

Sanusi, Isa, 2016. 'A hunger for romance in northern Nigeria', BBC, 4 May 2016.

Academic Articles:
Hess, Jonathan M., 2010. 
Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. [See Chapter 3: "Middlebrow Culture in Pursuit of Romance: Love, Fiction, and the Virtues of Marrying In"] Excerpt

Salmon, Catherine, 2016. 
"What Do Romance Novels, Pro Wrestling, and Mack Bolan Have in Common?: Consilience and the Pop Culture of Storytelling." Darwin's Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences. Ed. Joseph Carroll, Dan P. McAdams and Edward O. Wilson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016. 167-182. Excerpt
 
Tidwell, Christy, 2016. 
"“A Little Wildness”: Negotiating Relationships between Human and Nonhuman in Historical Romance", Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature, Ed. David Herman, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). 151-171. Excerpt Abstract [Focuses on Bertrice Small's Sky O'Malley and Patricia Gaffney's Wild at Heart]

Monday, May 09, 2016

Sad News: Conseula Francis

Eric posted the following message to the Romance Scholar listserv earlier today:

-------------------------

Very sad news this morning:  romance scholar Conseula Francis, who also worked on James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, and many other authors and topics, has died. Her husband posted this on Facebook this morning:

Dear Friends,
It is my sad duty to report, that shortly before dawn on May 9th, 2016, Conseula Alena Francis passed from this Earth. Not only was she the love of my life, but she also was a loving mother who blessed me with two wonderful girls.

Among her peers, she was well-respected as a scholar, academic, and administrator. As an educator, she was loved by her students, many of whom unabashedly agree that both in and out of the classroom she changed lives. She was beloved by her friends, and as a sister, daughter, sister-in-law, and daughter-in-law, she was adored by her relatives.

As her light passes into the next world, she leaves this world dimmer and colder. Please keep her in your memories.

I knew from FB that she had gone into the hospital, but her posts had indicated that it was nothing serious. It’s a terrible loss to her family, her academic community, and to the field.

Conseula’s groundbreaking essay on Zane as a romance novelist was published in the Romance Fiction and American Culture anthology last month; she was a contributor to the Popular Romance Project, with posts on iconography of the Obamas and on Zane and respectability politics. She was a deeply valued peer reviewer for JPRS, and appeared there in print as an interviewer of Joanna Russ.

She will be missed.

Best,
Eric

------------------------
The College of Charleston's tribute to her can be found here. The Post and Courier has published a short obituary as has ABCnews4.

[Edited to add: Another article, written by one of Conseula's colleagues, has been published at Inside Higher Education.]