Thursday and Friday last week, the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance hosted the First Annual International Conference of Popular Romance Studies. The conference was sponsored by Samhain Publishing, DePaul University, and the Romance Writers of America, and hosted by the Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland.
The conference was a wonderful success. Aussie TV even had great national coverage of the conference. All the papers presented were of a very high academic calibre, demonstrating the need for sustained, focused study of popular romance.
The conference, with presenters from India, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, Italy, China, the US, and of course, Australia, taught us that Popular Romance Studies is and should be a truly international pursuit. In learning the universality of popular romance, though, it teaches us to be very specific about the historical, social, and national culture of the text under consideration. (For example, the book I will be writing for the next few years is about the power, appeal, and history of the modern American romance hero, not the romance hero in general.)
The conference also taught us to be aware of cultural definitions of romance. The American middle-class definition requires a happy ending, but other cultural versions of romance might not. It is important to be conscious of our own historical, social, and national cultures, as well as aware of those in the texts we study.
The conference taught us that there is a strong, vibrant community of scholars of popular romance and that we all need to do continue coming together AS a community in order to expand the field of popular romance studies.
It taught us, finally, that it is very important that we’re studying popular romance. Period. We’re not limiting our conferences or our journal to the study of popular romance fiction. We just stop at popular romance–period–popular romance across all media and genres.
I’d say more, but I’ve been up for about 55 hours with five hours of sleep scattered through those very long hours on my journey home, so I have to get to bed to try to get over this jetlag. I’ll pop in today to say hi but I just wanted to tell you all about how thrilled we all were that the IASPR conference went so well and that we managed to learn so much from it. Let’s expand and deepen that understanding in next year’s IASPR conference in Belgium (and 2011 in New York City!).
No related posts.
The conference also taught us to be aware of cultural definitions of romance. The American middle-class definition requires a happy ending, but other cultural versions of romance might not. It is important to be conscious of our own historical, social, and national cultures, as well as aware of those in the texts we study.
That makes me very happy.
This sounds like a very informative conference. I may have to check into the New York Conference. Belgium is out of my price line.
2011 in NYC! Ooooh…
Thanks for the update, and for all your work putting the conference together. It sounds fascinating!
“In learning the universality of popular romance, though, it teaches us to be very specific about the historical, social, and national culture of the text under consideration.”
I’m really happy to hear this. It’d reduce a number of misunderstandings and communication breakdowns among us as well, such as the confusion about the origins (and probably, definition) of the romance genre.
Thank you so much for the conference, reports, and the lot. I hope I’ll make a trip to Belgium next year.
Sounds like it was a super conference. Huge, huge kudos, Sarah!
As a conference attendee I can tell you it was terrific. Many of the papers were absolutely fascinating particularly the ones from non-anglo countries. Well done Sarah, Eric, Toni and all the other organisers as well as the sponsors.
It sounds fascinating. I hope I have a chance to attend in 2011. NY is driving distance. Thanks for tell us about this, Sarah.
Am I the only person who’s offended at all the demographical nonsense?
I mean, come on. I’m a twenty-seven year old middle class American female. There are already a bunch of boxes I fit into; please don’t push me into any more, thanks.
Yeah, okay, culture and society have a lot to do with what make a romance a romance. But it isn’t the only factor, nor is it an important one.
I appreciate the study of what sold and why, but it’s all a waste if you’re just going to boil it down to demographics, ratios, and percentages. That’s just my opinion, of course, but the way I see it, demographics only show you what’s popular where; it doesn’t tell you how or why.
umm.. not sure what is offensive about saying your culture can define your view/expectations of romance?
I think you might have misunderstood the ‘demographical nonsense’, Liz. As an attendee I got the message that the very act of making ‘boxes’ was counterproductive and that the definition of romance is fluid depending on the point of focus.
And culture is a very important aspect, sorry to disagree — romance literature especially makes a commentary on the culture from which it originates but it is generally only with hindsight that we see how strong that commentary is.
“Yeah, okay, culture and society have a lot to do with what make a romance a romance. But it isn’t the only factor, nor is it an important one.”
Not important? I disagree.
I have had discussions with a number of British, American, Australian, New Zealanders, Belgian, Japanese and Spanish romance readers and authors, and their perspectives of what defines Romance/HEA and the history of the genre are strikingly different from each other.
Another example: for many outside the US, Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and The Flower isn’t recognised as “the first romance novel “to [follow] the principals into the bedroom.
“Aside from its content, the book was revolutionary in that it was one of the first single-title romance novels to be published as an original paperback, rather than being first published in hardcover, and, like the category romances, was distributed in drug stores and other mass-market merchandising outlets.” [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_romance
The Wikipedia entry obviously refers to the American history of the Romance genre as it seems to record cultural landmarks significant to the US only, but there’s nothing in the entry makes that clear.
That is why I’m happy with Sarah Franz’s post. I felt this might mean the written history of popular romance will be more specific, because it might mean a more detailed and clearer picture of the international cultural and historic landscape of popular romance.
Well done on a great conference Sarh et al. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the intellectual rigor that I found there. and wasn’t Brisbane nice and warm……
Thanks again,
Giselle
Thanks to Sarah, Eric, Toni, Glen & the other organisers of the conference, you did a fantastic job! I was only able to attend on Friday, and after hearing the fascinating papers presented on that day, I was even more upset that I couldn’t have been there on the Thursday also!
I agree with the other commenters with regards to the dismantling of the ‘boxes’, the conference really highlighted the diversity of the field of romance. Just one example – the paper presented on Chinese Web-based Matriarchal Romance.
I’m so sorry that I can’t make it to Cambridge in November, or to Brussels next year, perhaps I’ll have to change fields and work in romance so I have a better excuse to attend all these wonderful conferences!