Picture Day Friday

Fast food vendor jumping across trains, overflowing with passengers returning from pilgrimage, to ply his wares in India. Image copyright MSNBC.com

International Conference on Popular Romance

The Third Annual International Conference on Popular Romance

Can’t Buy Me Love?
Sex, Money, Power, and Romance

International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR)
Fales Library and Special Collection of New York University
New York City
June 26–28, 2011

*****

Sunday, 1:00-1:30
Registration

Sunday, 1:30-2:00pm
Opening Remarks: Sarah S. G. Frantz, IASPR President

Sunday, 2:00-3:00pm
Roundtable: Boundaries and Intersections: Romance, Erotica, and Pornography

•Cecilia Tan (author, editor, publisher)

Sunday, 3:00-3:30pm
Break

Sunday, 3:30-5:00
Formula/Convention/Archetype: Narrative Construction of Romance Fiction

•Catherine Roach (University of Alabama, USA): “I Love You,” He Said: The Money Shot in Romance Fiction as Feminist Porn
•Ashley Greenwood (San Diego State University, USA): Nora Roberts and Archetypes
•Jonathan A. Allan (University of Toronto, Canada): Fetish Commodity of Virginity in Popular Romance Novels
•An Goris (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium): Rape as a Trope in the Work of Nora Roberts

Sunday, 5:00-6:00
Reception

*****

Monday, 8:30-9:00
Registration

Monday, 9:00-10:30am
Love. Power. Justice?

•Sarah S. G. Frantz (Fayetteville State University, USA): The Rapist Hero and the Female Imagination
•Linda Lee (University of Pennsylvania, USA): The Illusion of Choice: Problematizing Predestined Love in Paranormal Romance
•Jessica Miller (University of Maine, USA): Emotional Justice in the Novels of Jennifer Crusie
•Margaret Toscano (University of Utah, USA): Love’s Balance Sheet: Accounting for the Bondage of Desire and the Freedom of Choice in Historical Romance

Monday, 10:30-11:00am
Break

Monday, 11:00-12:30pm
Love in the Stack: Popular Romance Collection Development in University Libraries

•Crystal Goldman (San Jose State University, USA)
•Nancy Down (Bowling Green State University, USA)
•Marilyn Dunn (Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, USA)
•Marvin J. Taylor (New York University, USA)

Monday, 12:30-1:30pm
Lunch (on your own)

Monday, 1:30-2:30
Keynote Speaker: Laura Kipnis (Northwestern University)

Monday, 2:30-3:00
Break

Monday, 3:00-4:30
Sex, Money, Power: Romance through the Ages

•Hannah Priest (University of Manchester, UK): ‘Hit Cost a Thousand Pound and Mar’: Love, Sex and Wealth in the Fourteenth-Century Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle
•Amanda Allen (Eastern Michigan University, USA): Charm the Boys, Win the Girls: Power Struggles in Mary Stolz’s Cold War Adolescent Girl Romance Novels
•Su-hsen Liu (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan): Modern Gothic Romance and its Translation in Taiwan: A Case Study of the Chinese Translation of Mistress of Mellyn
•Pamela Regis (McDaniel College, USA): The First Silhouette: Following the Money

Monday, 4:30-5:00pm
Break

Monday, 5:00-6:30pm
The Erotics of Property

•Eric Selinger (DePaul University, USA): Owning the Romance: Crusie, Phillips, and the “Erotics of Property”
•Ann Herendeen (Romance Author, USA): The Upper-Class Bisexual Man as Romantic Hero: The “Top” in the Social Structure and in the Bedroom
•Angela Toscano (University of Utah, USA): The Limits of Virtue, the Limits of Merit: Power, Privilege & Property in Historical Romance Fiction
Monday, 7:00-9:30pm
Dinner (Extra charge)

*****

Tuesday, 8:30-9:00am
Registration

Tuesday, 9:00-10:30am
Trading Places: Worldbuilding Romance in Fiction and Film

•Jennifer Kloester (University of Melbourne, Australia): Creating a Genre: The Power of Georgette Heyer’s Regency Novels
•Susan M. Kroeg (Eastern Kentucky University, USA): Regency World-Building, History, and the End(s) of Romance
•Betty Kaklamanidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece): The Absence of Sex and Money in the Contemporary Rom Com. Fact or Fiction?
•Jayashree Kamble (University of Minnesota): Temptation and the Big Apple: Bollywood romance goes West in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

Tuesday, 10:30-11:00am
Break

Tuesday, 11:00-12:30pm
Money Changes Everything; or, Does It?

•Federica Balducci (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Love on a Shoestring: Romance, Recession and Consumer Culture in Italian Chick Lit
•Elena Oliete-Aldea (University of Zaragoza, Spain): Greed is Good, but Love is Better: the Influence of Economy on Romance in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street Films
•Beatriz Oria (University of Zaragoza, Spain): Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: The Representation of Romantic Love In Sex and the City
•Antonia Losano (Middlebury College, USA): Value for Virtue in Multiple-Romance Narrative Romance

Tuesday, 12:30-1:30
Lunch (on your own

Tuesday, 1:30-3:00pm
Queering the Romantic Heroine: Where Her Power Lies

•Katherine E. Lynch (SUNY Rockland): One Small Step for Romance: The Evolution of the Queer Female Hero
•Ruth Sternglantz (Editor, Bold Strokes Books): Where the Wild Things Are: Contemporary Lesbian Romance and the Undomesticated Queer Hero
•Lynda Sandoval (Author): The Queer Heroine as a Re-imagined Reflection
•Len Barot/Radclyffe (Romance Author, Editor, and Publisher, Bold Strokes Books): Queering the Alpha

Tuesday, 3:00-3:30pm
Break

Tuesday, 3:30-4:30pm
Final Roundtable

Two Pieces

The Dunes of Friendship, a narrative travel article about one American woman's solo journey through Morocco, has been published by the Santa Barbara Chronicle.

Comments on Lynne Truss's humorous book on punctuation Eats, Shoots and Leaves have been published by the Los Angeles Chronicle.

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf has famously written, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." While her essay resulting from that seminal line is an argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition, I’ll take her statement even more literally: A woman writer needs a room of her own.

Some writers find it crucial to have a room far from the madding crowds in order to produce any quality work. Has this been your experience? If you've ever used a writing loft or rented a place to use as a writing room—either alone or with others—then your experience will resonate with mine.

I have tried writing in a coffee shop, but the ambient noise—at a near shout—made it impossible for me to concentrate.

I have tried sitting on the couch in our family room with a laptop. After 15 minutes, my wrists and neck hurt, and the touchpad mouse got difficult to use. Even after stretching and walking about and returning to write, a few minutes later, it’s the same result.

Settling on the breakfast table by the large windows, I thought, an occasional look outside at the yard and the forest beyond would prove to be soothing and inspirational. Wrong! The phone keeps ringing. My family keeps on interrupting: “Where is this?” “What do you think of that?”

I have tried sitting on the bed with the door closed. Now, at last I would have peace and quiet and a warm, comfortable spot. Well, it turns out it was too warm and too comfortable. I’m writing steadily for a while but then start feeling very sleepy. So in the short term, it’s a good solution, but it’s unworkable for anything more than 30–45 minutes.

The last place I finally tried was the barely furnished bonus room upstairs. It was located on one end of the house and with the door shut was nearly soundproof. A sign on the door kept the family out and the desk and chair meant that my arms and body were supported in the right position for hours of pain-free writing. My fingers few over the keyboard as my mind concentrated on my story. It wasn't fancy, the view outside the window wasn't great and the heater didn't work very well. But it was quiet, isolated, and I didn't have to drive to get there. It was heaven.

The room is much more comfortable now, with two 60-inch wide tables, a color printer, a sound system, zillion bookcases, a chaise (mais oui!), and a rug. I also have the requisite fuzzy slippers, fleece rug, and cardigan to ward off the cold. But best of all, I have it completely to myself for a few hours everyday.

Picture Day Friday 2

What would you like for Valentine's Day?

How about Mr. Darcy?

Visit MellyMo's Etsy Store to purchase your very own Colin Firth paper doll.



(Thanks to AustenProse for the link.)

Picture Day Friday

My favorite historical heroes: Matthew MacFadyen as Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace, Richard Armitage as Mr. Thornton in North & South, and Rupert Penry-Jones at Captain Wentworth in Persuasion.

Interesting aside: Three of them, except Gruffudd, have played starring roles in BBC's drama series Spooks / MI-5. Is it Ioan's turn next?

[Individual images are in the public domain. Collage is by me.]