Popular Romance Conference in Belgium

A Call For Proposals

for

The 2nd Annual International Conference on Popular Romance

Popular Romance Studies: Theory, Text and Practice

Brussels, Belgium
5-7 August, 2010

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) is seeking proposals for innovative panels, papers, roundtables, discussion groups, and multi-media presentations that contribute to a sustained conversation about romantic love and its representations in popular media throughout the world, from antiquity to the present. We welcome analyses of individual textsbooks, films, websites, songs, performances, as well as broader inquiries into the creative industries that produce and market popular romance and into the emerging critical practice of popular romance studies.

This conference has three main goals:

To bring to bear contemporary critical theory on the texts and contexts of popular romance, in all forms and media, from all national and cultural traditions

To foster comparative and intercultural analyses of popular romance, by documenting and/or theorizing what happens to tropes and texts as they move across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries

To explore the relationships between popular romance tropes and texts as they circulate between elite and popular culture, between different media (e.g., from novel to film, or from song to music video), between cultural representations and the lived experience of readers, viewers, listeners, and lovers

After the conference, proceedings will be subjected to peer-review and published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS).

IASPR is pleased and proud to announce that the Keynote Speakers for the conference will be:
Celestino Deleyto, University of Zaragoza, Spain
Lynne Pearce, Lancaster University, UK
Pamela Regis, McDaniel College, USA

Please submit proposals by January 1, 2010. Direct questions to: conferences@iaspr.org.

We are currently pursuing funds to help defray the cost of travel to Belgium for the conference. If these funds become available, we will notify those accepted how to apply for support from IASPR.

(Please circulate this CFP far and wide!)