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 →
