Kate Reports on Romance Scholarship

NEWS FLASH Our own Allison Brennan is a double RITA Finalist in Romantic Suspense for Speak No Evil and in Best Novel with Some Romantic Elements for See No Evil. CONGRATULATIONS, ALLISON.

Usually Romance readers and writers encounter little but scorn from the outside world. Friends ask, “When are you going to write a real book?” Mainstream reviewers don’t review romances. Libraries don’t stock them. And proponents of literary fiction look down their long noses at books regarded as “fluff,” or “trash,” written by women for women.

So imagine the giddy delight of gathering with scholars from Australia to France, Arizona to Chicago who not only read and enjoy romances but also find them significant, interesting, and revealing of the human condition. Our small but happy band of romance enthusiasts talked non-stop for about three days last week, trading titles and insights in the depths of the Marriott Hotel in San Francisco, where the Romance Writers of America will meet later this summer.

THURSDAY

Our first session began with a scholar from Queensland, Australia, interested in how Romance authors have created a different kind of creative, interactive community through websites and blogs. He is interested in the entrepreneurial model of the romance writer and issues of whether websites and blogs can bring in new readers. It turns out that the Australian government spends a great deal to support research on Romance novels. A French scholar, Severine Olivier then traced what happens to Harlequin romances written by Americans when they cross the pond to France. Apparently, and surprisingly, some of the raciness disappears. In America the hero can say, “You should’ve known better than to get into the truck with me and my untrustworthy hard-on.” In France he can only say, “You shouldn’t have got into the pick up with me.” Severine further revealed that Harlequin Romances have done away with a thriving national Romance writing community. Glinda Hall from Arkansas State University started out to study Southern women storytellers for her dissertation and ended up joining the RWA (Romance Writers of America), reading lots of romances, and interviewing folks like Pat Potter and Deb Dixon in order to understand what she discovered to be a supportive, mentoring community of women focused on a need or a passion to tell stories. She found them to be doers and actors.

Crystal Goldman, a university librarian and erotica writer, reads local RWA member Kate Douglas, for instance, and distinguishes between explicit material and pornographic material. She acknowledges that for a woman to open a romance novel on an airplane is an act of courage. Three scholars introduced us to the work of earlier Romance writers like Eleanor Sleath, Bertha M. Clay, and an Australian railroad signalman with two children who wrote a book a month (romance, detective, and western) for years even with a day job and kids. Jennifer Woolston of Indiana University of Pennsylvania gave us insight into Jaqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls and its relationship to the novels that followed and to the chick lit of today. Cathy Yardley was mentioned. We all gathered for a Romance Fiction Open Forum to close the day’s sessions.

FRIDAY

I traveled by Ferry and foot from Marin to the City for each day’s events, so I was up early, fueled by high-test Peet’s coffee, and on the run. Friday’s first session was a panel with Lynn Coddington, Alicia Rasley, and I, presenting three perspectives on the writer, reader, and characters in romance, all suggesting that Romance is transformative for women. Lynn’s work came out of her doctoral dissertation. She cited belle hooks’ comment that “love is the most reliable path to substantive social change in a democratic society.” What Lynn found in talking to Romance writers as they wrote was that in the process of writing strong heroines, writers themselves came to identify and act on ways to take charge of their careers, negotiating better contracts, for instance. She could point to language in the books that perfectly mirrored an author’s description of her contract negotiations.

Then it was my turn. I talked about Romance novels as narratives of growth and change (transformation) accomplished mutually. My two main examples were Sophie Jordan’s One Night with You and Laura Kinsale’s Dream Hunter. In both stories the heroine is as devalued as a woman can be in society. In both the heroine tries to use disguise to accomplish her own liberation from oppression. In both the hero and heroine ultimately accomplish mutual transformation through love (Lynn’s point). At the same time I was reading Susan Mallery’s Accidentally Yours, which works in the same way—single-mom, hairdresser with no college education, not a valued woman in our society, but she is the heroine of wit, kindness, and determination. In the end, strong as she is, she and her hero need to accomplish their change and growth together. Monica, Bella, and Jami’s famous black moment arrives in these texts when one or the other of the two characters refuses the transformation.

Alicia, who spoke at our San Francisco RWA last year, and whose new book, The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life, just came out from Writer’s Digest Books, finished our panel. Her focus was how the structure of Romance novels reveals the transformation that’s occurred in paired scenes like Darcy’s two proposals in Pride and Prejudice and Jervaux’s two discoveries of his parenthood in Flowers from the Storm.

We had a little time to catch our breath and have some lunch at the Westfield Mall, including a trip to Cocoa Bella, the chocolatier.

The afternoon sessions included Jayashree Kamble from the University of Minnesota re-examining sexual violence in Romance fiction, and Hsu-Ming Teo from Macquarie University talking about those Sheiks. She had a Barbara McMahon cover right in the middle of her first slide. ( Hsu-Ming is the scholarly equivalent of Sylvia Day in productivity.) Angela Toscano, a librarian from New York, talked about how the hero and heroine are equally present in Heyer’s The Devil’s Cub and Anne Stuart’s Devil’s Waltz in a way that subverts the social hierarchy. Joanna Fedson, another Australian, gave us insight into the expectations of Christian or Inspirational fiction.

Just when we all might have faded into an afternoon stupor lulled by air conditioning machines, some interesting topics came up. San Francisco’s own Pam Rosenthal related her work to the work of feminists of various sexual orientations and their ability to imagine moments when the power balance shifts between lovers. Sarah Franz (whose complete recap of the conference panels is available on the Teach Me Tonight blog) took us “Beyond the Straight and Narrow: [to] Power Exchange and the Gay/Lesbian Romance.” She expanded common conceptions of sexual orientation and considered how power exchanges are represented through sexual relations in some edgy romance novels, even from such an unlikely source as Harlequin. I had to run to the Ferry just then, so I missed some popular erotic romance writers and editors speaking on male/male stories and their role in the sub-genre of erotic romance.

SATURDAY

Saturday morning I was back for two final sessions, first with Kris Ramsdell and her colleague Doug Highsmith, both of Cal State, East Bay, presenting their beginning work on an encyclopedia of romance, and second with Eric Selinger of DePaul University, who might be blamed for this whole surge in Romance Scholarship.

Eric’s colleague, Jonathan Gross led us through an analysis of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire’s novel, The Sylph, and Jack Engelhard’s novel, Indecent Proposal, made into the film with Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harleson, fascinating ideas about money and love colliding and the commodification of love. An Goris from Belgium gave one of my favorite talks about romance as a genre and how our most famous critic, Janice Radway, got it wrong in her critique, Reading the Romance. Laura Gronewold from the University of Arizona gave a talk on the aesthetics of the Romance novel, focusing on the “Kitsch Mirror” and distinctions between art and what is not art. Eric finished the Romance sequence of the program with a look at how Romance novels genuinely promote happiness. Studies show! Using Seligman’s theory about satisfaction with the past; present happiness; and hope for the future, Eric showed, with particular reference to Jenny Crusie’s novels, how Romance characters rescript the past; recognize and dispute negative thoughts in the present; and embrace the future.

Everyone who attended these panels came away with titles to look up, questions to pursue, new contacts in the field, and ideas for articles and books to write. Now it’s your turn. What questions should scholars ask about Romance? What titles, authors, or kinds of works are essential to an understanding of the genre? What would you want someone to write a book on? What role can readers and writers play in developing this field?

Comments

[Allison Brennan]

Thanks Kate :) I was surprised and thrilled!

Great and informative article! I think that all scholars need to study Nora Roberts; after all, she is the internationally best known contemporary romance writer. Why do people connect with her books? I think it's because of the style--they are comfortable and accessible. And because of the themes--love, forgiveness, strength, passion, hope . . . everything we need to survive as a society. The best books--no matter what genre--are those which tap into universal truths and human emotion. Nora does it (seemingly) effortlessly.

[Allison Moore]

I'm glad scholars are recognizing that romance is more than "fluff." Kate (my mom) remembers the English class I dropped in college because the professor kept trashing romance novels and Jane Austen. Maybe he won't be able to get away with that anymore.

[Janga]

Congratulations, Allison!

All this exciting scholarly work on romance makes me wish I were a grad student looking for a dissertation topic rather than winding down my career. Someone(Santa) commented on another site yesterday that Jenny Crusie is the Jane Austen of our day. That idea is a research paper just waiting to be written. I'd love to read it.

I would love to see a study of the popularity of connected books and how these books relate to the series of girls' books that many romance readers grew up reading.

[Barbara Freethy]

Janga - That's an interesting question about the connected books tying into what we grew up reading, the series of Nancy Drew, etc. I bet that is part of the appeal.

Kate - Wonderful article. Thanks for sharing. It's so great to see romance studied in such an intellectual way.

And I agree with Allison that Nora's storytelling voice is so strong and brings the reader into a world where the themes emerge.

[Kathleen Dante]

It's great to see more scholarship into romance. LOL That reference to Janice Radway really takes me back. When I was in college, she was the only authority to cite. I did my thesis on romance books (specifically the renamed Silhouette Intimate Moments) and it was difficult to find relevant studies. Back then, I looked at the image of women as presented in SIMs; I'll bet it's quite different in today's books.

[Brenda]

Thanks for the fabulous report, Kate. I remember meeting someone at national once who was doing a study and was grateful to see romance beginning to get some respect. Sounds like positive regard is building even in the academic world.

Brenda

[MonicaMcCarty]

How fascinating, Kate! Sounds like a great conference. Like everyone else, I'm glad to see that romance is finally being considered significant enough for academic study. I'd be interested in a couple of thinks...why is it that romance, which clearly accounts for a huge portion of overall book sales in our country, has been marginalized and ignored by almost everyone except for its loyal readers. Is it because it's written mostly by and for women? Also, I'd love to see more study into the perception of romance as anti-feminist versus the reality of today's romance.

[Jami Alden]

Kate, that sounds like such a cool conference! My editor (Hilary Sares) said something to me a couple of years ago that I found fascinating. Basically she was commenting on the popularity of dark paranormal romance and urban fantasy, and how it wasn't going away because of the darker undercurrents in post 911 society and global terrorism. I'm doing her a terrible injustice in my paraphrasing, but it was such a keen observation of how society sort of develops a collective subconscious that influences not just serious literature, but popular mass market fiction.

[KateMoore]

Everyone, thanks for commenting today. I'm glad other people are finding this topic interesting. Everyone there was so excited about the work in this field. Candice pointed out to me that I didn't name the conference anywhere in the post. Ah, the rush to blog. It was the Popular Culture/American Culture Conference, and those people know how to workshop. Each day had a program of workshops from 8:00 a.m. through 8:30 p.m. The 480-page program was daunting and weighty. I had to leave the thing home or risk shoulder damage carrying it in my bag.
Allison--Nora definitely makes the cut as an important author to study.
Janga--Crusie, too, is drawing lots of critical attention. Sarah, Eric, and I are three of about seven scholars doing work on her for a proposed book. I like the question about the connected books we read growing up. Lots of people in the group had read the same childhood books.
Kathleen--interesting about the image of women in the SIMS. My whole premise was about the undervalued woman insisting on her own value to the hero and not settling for less than full recognition of it. An Goris really takes on Radway in her genre study.
Brenda--RWA has a big part in promoting this scholarship, and the scholars themselves are hoping to present some of their work to interested RWA members at one of our national conferences soon.
Monica--I think these scholars are going to take that perception of romance as "anti-feminist" and stomp all over it.
Jami--I think you are dead on about a popular consciousness. Writers are tuned in to that sort of thing. Austen certainly was. I think that's why the Romance genre and the Feminist movement have grown up together.

[Irene Peterson]

What I keep telling people who try to tell me romance novels are trash...they aren't your mother's romance novels any more.

There are thousands of romances published every year. Surely, after all this time, the genre has to mean something to "scholars". Thank you for the report on the conference. Wish I'd been there.

[Irene Peterson]

What I keep telling people who try to tell me romance novels are trash...they aren't your mother's romance novels any more.

There are thousands of romances published every year. Surely, after all this time, the genre has to mean something to "scholars". Thank you for the report on the conference. Wish I'd been there.

[Irene Peterson]

Sorry!!!!!!

[Janga]

Pamela Regis's A Natural History of the Romance Novel (2003), which predated the current rise of interest in the academic world, does devote significant attention to Nora Roberts as well as to E. M. Hull, Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart, Janet Dailey, and Jayne Ann Krentz.

[KateMoore]

Janga, Lots of references to Pam Regis's work by various presenters at the conference. One nice thing about the conference was the signs of scholars coming together to share their work.
Irene, interesting, because at the conference, some of the work being done was on "your mother's romances." Of the novels of Bertha M. Clay apparently the most widely read was the story of Dora Thorne, the groundskeeper's daughter who marries the young heir to an earldom, but who endures all kinds of suffering and isolation from him AFTER the wedding, almost as if she is being punished for her presumption. Only after being much despised and outcast does she get her man back. Sort of like the plot of Anya Seton's Katherine. I much prefer the feisty heroine to the suffering one. :)

[Bella Andre]

Kate, This conference and the discussions sound extremely interesting! Was it open to the public?

[Candice Hern]

Wow, I wish I could have attended that conference. It sounds fabulous. I am thrilled to hear that the romance genre is getting serious attention.

For those scholars who may be reading this, you should know that RWA sponsors an academic grant each year for serious study of the genre. They've awarded 5 grants so far. If you're interested, check this info page: http://rwanational.org/cs/academic_research_grant/overview

[Carol Grace]

Kate, sounds like you did a superb job defending the genre! Thanks from all of us!

[Terry Odell]

I belong to an on-line crit group with several male, non romance members. I find them to be very useful in catching 'guy stuff' and they're excellent critical readers as well. Nice to have 'out of the genre' eyes for a new slant on things...
Anyway, on another discussion loop, on of those members said, "I've never liked romance novels. I've never been able to get past page 10 of one."
I pointed out that at the moment, he was reading, critiquing (and enjoying, by his own account) page 151 of my WIP, which, by definition, was a romance novel.
He was appropriately apologetic and I think a few more minds were opened.

[Karin Tabke]

Kate, I would have loved to have attended. Do they have it every year in SF?

[Michelle]

Thanks so much for sharing!

I too did a paper on romance novels in college - comparing Spanish ones to American ones. It was one of my most fun research projects. I read Radway - awful - such a lack of respect of the people she was studying. The most helpful secondary source then was that series of essays edited by Jayne Anne Krentz - Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women...