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 21^st 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