Romantic Regions: Call for Papers, IASPR Conference 2025

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We are now inviting submissions for the 2025 International Association for the Study of Popular Romance Conference. It will take place from June 24-26 2025 at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, with a Zoom option for people unable to attend in person. We are accepting submissions for papers, panels, or workshops delivered in English or Spanish. 

Our theme for the 2025 IASPR conference is Romantic Regions, thinking through the evolving relationships between romance, place, and space, building on the previous two IASPR conferences—Sydney 2018 (“Think Globally, Love Locally”) and Birmingham 2023 (“Romance Revitalised”). We encourage people to think broadly and creatively about the idea of the “region”, which may refer to geographic, economic, and/or political regions such as North America, or may be approached from more abstract angles. As Lisa Fletcher and Elizabeth Leane argue in Space, Place and Bestsellers, bestselling novels—like romance novels and other romantic media—“are spatialised in their industrial, social, and textual operations” (2024, 3). This can occur in many different scales, localities and contexts, and we invite you to explore whichever of these you like. 

We welcome papers on any of the following in relation to romance (not an exhaustive list):

  • World-building / imaginary geographies / secondary worlds
  • Translation
  • Transnational movement / circulation
  • Migration
  • Escapism and situated reading
  • Romance outside of the global north
  • Space
  • Adaptation / romance across genres
  • Genre boundaries
  • Genre-breaking / shifting 
  • Comparative studies (across regions, genres, languages)

“Romance” here is not limited to popular romance fiction: we welcome discussions of romance in any form. While our theme focuses on place and space, we are also open to papers that take other approaches to romance. If it’s about romance, we’re interested!

Popular Romance Studies is an interdisciplinary field, including (but not limited to) scholars from literary studies; film, television, and media studies; communication and the social sciences; critical race, feminist, queer and disability studies; audience & fan studies, etc. All theoretical and empirical approaches are welcome. So too are all types of contributions, including talks, panels, and workshops on professional development, international collaboration, and pedagogy. Content creators, writers, and professionals from various romance industries are invited to submit proposals as well. 

Submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words, by November 30, 2024, through the following Google form: https://forms.gle/PqBPPnaxMfgmvUFGA

Panel submissions of 3-4 related papers are welcome (please provide 250 word abstracts for all papers, along with 100 word biographies of each speaker). If you are proposing a workshop, please fill this form out as if you were submitting a paper, and note that it is a workshop in the title. You must be a member of IASPR to present at the conference. 

Please indicate if you are intending to attend in-person or online. You are not locked into this if your plans change, but it will help us get a rough idea of numbers. 

If you do not have a permanent academic job at a university (eg. PhD students, contingently employed staff, independent scholars), you may be eligible for the Kathleen Seidel Travel Grant. Please note when you submit your abstract if you wish to receive more information about this opportunity, which will be available in the coming months. If you have any questions or are having difficulty submitting, please contact us at conferences@iaspr.org.

CFP: Romance Area, Conference of the Popular Culture Association (2025)

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Romance Area

Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

April 16-19, 2025 – New Orleans, Louisiana

Disrobing the Trope

It does not take an expert to see how important tropes currently are in the marketing of romantic media. Whether we’re talking about friends who find themselves in an only-one-bed situation (and thus become lovers), or enemies forced to fake date (and thus become lovers), or a grump who gets a second chance (to become lovers) with their sunshine-y childhood sweetheart, tropes have become ubiquitous to the way romance narratives are discussed.

In the Romance area of PCA, however, we are experts—and thus, for this year’s conference, we’d like to provoke people to think through and theorize the trope in popular romantic media.

Screenshot of The Ripped Bodice's 8th Annual Summer Romance Bingo card.

In particular, we pose three provocative questions:

1) what are tropes?

2) what do tropes do?

3) where do tropes come from?

We encourage you to respond to these questions broadly, and to think not just about specific texts but also about their creators, consumers and critics, to understand the broader discussions in which these texts are implicated.

We need to stop taking tropes for granted. This conference is the time to set aside our customary acceptance of tropes as a central feature of romance and look more analytically at their origins, functions, and meanings. As both scholars and consumers of romantic imagery and narratives, of course we have our own favorite tropes, and others we despise. However, our aim in raising this topic is not to rehash those familiar debates about which texts and tropes are “good” or “bad.” Instead, we invite deep thinking from the scholarly community on the strange problem that is the trope.    

If the thought of talking about tropes doesn’t float your boat, or you simply want to pursue your own intellectual passion, you are very welcome to do so.

Who we are

The Romance Area of the PCA is 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/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area. Undergraduates sponsored by an academic mentor are also welcome. Please see the Romance area on the PCA website for our policy for undergraduates; if the website is difficult to navigate, contact us and we’ll send you a copy of the policy.

The Romance area invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance. Past presenters have drawn on methods from literary studies, history, library sciences, sociology, film studies, and creative writing, to name the most common approaches—we’ve even had a presentation with puppets (you know who you are). We’ve loved all of these.

Finally, we are not interested solely in novels! The Romance area is open to engagements with all forms of media and culture that are concerned with romance, including, but not limited to, the following: art; literature; philosophy; radio and audio media; film and television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling; and apps, including dating apps. 

As the global pandemic continues, plans may change. You can check the PCA website for updates. We will also send updates to our Romance Area mailing list. If you are not on the mailing list and wish to be, please contact us.

Submit 250-word abstracts to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2024. One of us will review them within two weeks or so and notify you about our decision. You’ll hear more from us as the date approaches.

Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

If you have any questions at all, please contact the area chairs:

Dr. Heather Schell
George Washington University
Washington, DC
schellhm@gwu.edu

Dr. Jodi McAlister
Deakin University
Melbourne, Australia
jodi.mcalister@deakin.edu.au

IASPR 2025: See you in Mexico!

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We’re pleased to announce that IASPR’s 2025 conference will be held at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City! We’re working hard on the CFP and other details, so stay tuned for more information.

The Romance Wikithon!

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Valentine’s Day is coming up, and we’ve decided to celebrate by adding to public knowledge about popular romance media and expanding romance’s representation on Wikipedia, one of the world’s most frequently-accessed resources.

Join us on February 14th/15th (depending on your time zone) for a virtual Wikipedia editing party!

This 90-minute session will be practical and informal. It is aimed at those who have never edited Wikipedia before. Training and guidance will be given. Recommended for those who might be interested in using Wikipedia as part of teaching, for those who are interested in learning more about how to edit Wikipedia, and for anyone who would like to make positive change in the world! The session will be facilitated by Dr Amy Burge, who has run editathons at the University of Cardiff, and has used Wikipedia for assessment with students.

When:

Wednesday 14th February        London         20:00-21:30
                                                  Chicago        14:00-15.30
Thursday 15th February           Melbourne    07:00-08:30 

Free Registration Link:

HTTP://TINYURL.COM/FEBWIKITHON

All interested people are welcome to attend, whether or not they are IASPR members! Feel free to share this post, or the poster with your friends and colleagues, and we look forward to seeing you on the 14th/15th.

CFP: Romance Area, Conference of the Popular Culture Association

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Looking for a friendly romance conference to bridge the gap until the next IASPR gathering? One option is the Romance Area of the annual Popular Culture Association conference, which is co-chaired by IASPR Vice President Jodi McAlister and long-time IASPR member Heather Schell. Please see their CFP below!

Romance Area

Popular Culture Association Conference (PCA/ACA)

March 27-30, 2024 – Chicago, Illinois

Ugly Love

When critical attention to romance rebooted in the 21st century, the new wave of scholars made a conscious decision to move away from the often-pejorative approaches of earlier critics and focus instead on romance’s strengths:  an emphasis on women’s pleasure, for example, and models of good communication.

However, romance is an emotion-centered genre, and the sentiments it explores include such ugly feelings as jealousy, envy, and a thirst for vengeance. Ugly themes and ugly tropes also abound (see, for instance, the bully romance, or the recuperation of Nazis as romantic heroes), as well as plentiful examples of ugly behaviors in media cultures surrounding romance (such as the recent sexual harassment scandal that erupted around a section of hockey romance fans on TikTok).

The theme of the PCA Romance area in 2024 is the ugly in romance and romantic media. We encourage you to define this theme broadly, and to think not just about specific texts but also about their creators, consumers and critics, to understand the broader discussions in which these texts are implicated.

We also encourage you to move away from decisionist and diagnostic approaches that seek to position texts on a spectrum of progressivism to conservatism. Our aim in raising this topic for exploration is not to pass judgment, but to enable deep thinking in the scholarly community – to ask questions that go beyond asking whether texts and tropes are “good” or “bad” and think in more nuanced, layered ways about their affordances and the work they perform.

Possible topics on this theme could include:

  • negative emotions, affect theory, and romance
  • tropes: enemies to loves, the other woman, etc.
  • Taming of the Shrew and its remakes
  • erotica and fantasies of submission:  the legacy of Fifty Shades
  • the villain hero, the criminal hero, the morally grey hero
  • criminal dyads:  Bonnie and Clyde, etc.
  • ugly scandals in book and media culture
  • cheating, lying, and misbehaving love interests
  • break-up revenge songs
  • jealousy in poly romance
  • bully romance, mafia romance, stalker romance, dark romance
  • fantasies of sexual coercion
  • degradation
  • the eroticised abject and/or the eroticised disgusting
  • hate reading and/or hate watching
  • extreme confession/memoir (ex. Bentley’s The Surrender, The Story of O, etc.)
  • transactional sex
  • dirty talk
  • ugly emotion and the therapeutic romance

If none of these suggestions appeal, or you simply want to pursue your own intellectual passion, you are very welcome to do so.

Who we are

The Romance Area of the PCA is 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/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area.  Undergraduates sponsored by an academic mentor are also welcome (please see the Romance area on the PCA website for our policy for undergraduates).

The Romance area invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance. Past presenters have drawn on methods from literary studies, history, library sciences, sociology, film studies, and creative writing, to name the most common approaches—we’ve even had a presentation with puppets (you know who you are). We’ve loved all of these. We would also like to emphasize that you do not need to write about romance novels to participate in this area (although that is obviously welcome!). The Romance area is open to engagements with all forms of media and culture that are concerned with romance, including, but not limited to, the following: art; literature; philosophy; radio and audio media; film and television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling; and apps, including dating apps.

As the global pandemic continues, plans may change.  You can check the PCA website for updates.  We will also send updates to our Romance Area mailing list. If you are not on the mailing list and wish to be, please contact us.

Submit 250-word abstracts to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2023, but ideally by November 29th to make it easier for our area chairs, since the PCA website is tricky this year! One of us will review them within two weeks or so and notify you about our decision.  You’ll hear more from us as the date approaches.

Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

If you have any questions at all, please contact the area chairs:

Dr. Heather Schell
George Washington University
Washington, DC
schellhm@gwu.edu

Dr. Jodi McAlister
Deakin University
Melbourne, Australia
jodi.mcalister@deakin.edu

IASPR Digital Event Series: Recommending Romance

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There are so many romance novels in the world. How do you decide where to start reading? How do you decide what to recommend to your friends, family, or coworkers who are curious about the genre? What are the ins, outs, and ramifications of recommending romance?

Join fellow romance scholars and fans for a digital panel on recommending romance featuring:

 

When

8 September (LA 13:00   London 21:00)
9 September (Sydney 6:00)

Where

Zoom. Meeting ID: 939 9332 8796      Passcode: romrecs

You can sign up to get information about our future events by visiting this link: https://t.co/gmW1oZKXRd

Call for Proposals: IASPR Conference 2023

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The ninth annual international conference on popular romance studies:

Romance Revitalised
Birmingham, UK, June 28-30 2023

Proposal deadline: December 31, 2022

This will be the first meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance in five years. In this time, the world has changed significantly: how we live, and, as a result, how we love.

In the spirit of renewal, the theme for the 2023 IASPR conference is a broad one. We are open to proposals for papers, posters and panels on anything to do with the popular culture of romantic love, now and in the past, from any discipline, from anywhere in the world.

Popular Romance Studies is an interdisciplinary field, including (but not limited to) scholars from literary studies; film, television, and media studies; communication and the social sciences; critical race, feminist, queer and disability studies; audience & fan studies, etc. All theoretical and empirical approaches are welcome, including talks, panels, and workshops on professional development, international collaboration, and pedagogy. Content creators, writers, and professionals from various romance industries are invited to submit proposals as well.

Submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words, to conferences@iaspr.org by December 31, 2022. Please specify whether you are proposing a paper, workshop, or poster. Panel submissions (3-4 related papers) are welcome.

We are currently investigating the possibility of a hybrid conference. Please indicate whether you would be interested in this option.

If you do not have a permanent academic job at a university (eg. a PhD student, contingent staff, an independent researcher), or are an untenured Assistant Professor, you may be eligible for the Kathleen Seidel Travel Grant. Please note if you wish to receive more information about this opportunity.

Call for proposals! Popular Romance Studies at PCA 2023

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The Popular Culture Association’s annual conference is divided into sub-areas representing different areas of scholarship. The Romance Area of PCA has become a regular gathering point for many emerging and established popular romance scholars. 

Romance Area Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA)
April 5-8 2023 – San Antonio, TX

Body Politic/Body Politics

The body politic (n.): A nation regarded as a corporate entity; (with the) the state. (OED)

Body politics (n): 1. The intersection of state interest with the bodies of its subjects (esp. marginalized subjects); state attempts to regulate those bodies. 2. The study of the ways in which marginalized bodies are a subject of state interest.

The twentieth-century Western romance narrative involved a fertile, able-bodied, cis-gendered heterosexual couple committing to a permanent heteronormative reproductive partnership sanctioned by church and state. This normative expectation was seldom questioned. As Waylen et al. have noted, “Seemingly personal issues associated with the body—such as rape, contraception, hair and clothing styles, pregnancy, or sexual harassment—were not traditionally seen as ‘political’”
(Waylen et al., 2013). Such “personal” issues have long been central to romance narratives.

Since the 1970s, this consensus view of romantic love has eroded, and romantic popular culture is now less univocal in its depictions of body politics. Can a “good” heroine have sex out of wedlock? With someone she doesn’t plan to marry? Can she use birth control? Can she find happiness if she isn’t white, or straight, or monogamous, or able-bodied, or cis-gendered? What kinds of authority do protagonists have over their own bodies? What types of state intervention must they submit to or fight? The diversity of opinion showcased in today’s romantic narratives makes it more challenging for readers to ignore the body politics in a book. In fact, one could argue that choosing a subgenre (such as inspirational romance or erotica) is already an expression of a reader’s body politics.

As Romance Area chairs preparing for our PCA meeting in San Antonio, Texas, body politics is on our minds. Texas is at the forefront of rolling back abortion rights as the country wrestles with the rollback of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade case (which also originated in Texas). But Texas is only one piece of the bigger picture. Elsewhere, state legislatures are fighting over the rights of people with non-conforming gender or sexual identities. The entire nation is and always has been embroiled in body politics, from the forceable relocation of Indigenous Americans, the enslavement of African-Americans, and decades on intense government oversight of where, how, and if BIPOC people were allowed to live, reproduce, attend school, shop, enjoy leisure time, and enjoy state-sanctioned romantic relationships. All of these seemingly private choices lie at the very heart of the romance narrative.

The theme of the PCA Romance area in 2023 is the body politic/body politics in romance and romantic media. We encourage you to define this theme broadly, and to think not just about specific texts but also about their authors, writers, and publishers, to understand the broader discussions in which these texts are implicated. How can we most productively think through the entanglements of bodies and politics?

Possible topics on this theme could include: Continue reading →

Openings at IASPR and JPRS!

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International Association for the Study of Popular Romance: Secretary

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) is seeking a Secretary to join our Executive Committee. This is a volunteer position, with a two-year term.

IASPR is a thirteen-year old scholarly association dedicated to fostering and promoting the scholarly exploration of all popular representations of romantic love. IASPR is committed to building a strong community of scholars of popular romance through open, digital access to all scholarly work published by the Association, by organizing or sponsoring an annual international conference on popular romance studies, and by encouraging the teaching of popular romance at all levels of higher education.

The formal duties of IASPR Secretary include scheduling and setting the agendas for our monthly Executive Committee meetings, taking minutes at those meetings, managing our organizational document / materials database, and monitoring our contact@iaspr.org email address to forward inquiries as needed. The Secretary is part of every policy discussion and decision made by the Executive Committee and, as has happened with other positions, the job will evolve to suit your interests and skills.

If you would like to apply for this position, please send an email about your interest to Jayashree Kamblé at president@iaspr.org.

 

Journal of Popular Romance Studies: Film and Television Editor

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) is seeking a Film and Television editor to join their editorial team. This is a volunteer position.

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is an interdisciplinary journal publishing contributions on the study of popular romance media. We also publish book reviews, notes and queries, special issues, and reports from the classroom that outline techniques and tools, syllabus models, and practical pieces on the teaching of popular romance media and culture.

Click here to read more about this position.