In 2007, Sarah Frantz and Eric Selinger plotted world domin….no, wait, that’s another story.

One night at the 2007 annual conference of the Popular Culture Association, Sarah Frantz and Eric Selinger sat around a table with other romance scholars. There was too much Guinness and much general hilarity. And we all decided that in order to grow the academic field of popular romance scholarship, we needed a few things. To whit: dedicated conferences, a dedicated academic organization, and a dedicated journal.

The First Annual Conference of Popular Romance Studies was therefore planned — on a bar napkin. Glen Thomas mentioned that the Romance Writers of Australia would be having their annual conference in 2009 in Brisbane. As this is also the home of Glen’s institution, Queensland University of Technology, and of romance scholar Toni Johnson-Woods’ institution, the University of Queensland, this seemed too good to let slip. The Brisbane Popular Romance Conference will take place on August 13-14, 2009.

IASPR and the Journal of Popular Romance Studies was also the brainchild of that raucous meeting-of-minds. IASPR officially opened for business June 2009. The Journal will launch on 14 February, 2010.

Our Second Annual International Conference of Popular Romance Studies will be held in Leuven, Belgium, 5-7 August, 2010. Its theme will be “Theorizing Romance.”

Or Third Annual International Conference will be held in New York City in 2011, and our Fourth Annual Conference will be held in Los Angeles in 2012.