Friday, February 21, 2014

CFP: MLA Convention 2015



The MLA Convention 2015 will take place in Vancouver from January 8-11 and Maria Teresa Ramos-Garcia has posted two calls for papers related to romance:
Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy in the 21st Century

Why has the paranormal become so prevalent in romance? How are romance conventions, expectations, and readership altered in this subgenre?

Fifty Heirs of Grey

How has the success of Fifty Shades of Grey influenced the reading and writing of romance novels, as well as the marketing of erotica?
If you're interested in presenting a paper, send a 300-word abstract to Maria (maria.ramos@sdstate.edu) by 15 March 2014.

Sunday, February 09, 2014

Out Now: Issue 4.1 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies


As Eric Selinger observes in his introduction to the latest issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies,
we have three essays on the subgenre of erotic romance:  two on the most famous recent contribution to that subgenre, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy, engaging it via the sharply different perspectives of fan-fiction / fandom studies and the history of white masculinity; one on the groundbreaking collection Macho Sluts (1988) by Patrick Califia, which situates this volume of lesbian BDSM fiction at the crossroads of public history (the feminist anti-pornography movement of the 1980s), queer activism, and romance genre conventions.
 They're

There is also a special section dedicated to Love in Latin American Popular Culture:
And, of course, there are a number of reviews: