@spurtle.bsky.social Thought this might be of interest to some readers of the Spurtle bsky.app/profile/drha...

This new series from the University of Wales Press is looking for proposals! I'm on the Board, as are some other romance scholars, so there's definitely an openness to proposals including/focussed on popular romance fiction.

Got this in an email from Academia. I'm not encouraging their use of AI by clicking on this. In any case, I think I can be fairly certain that no-one is sitting on a pile of 💵, desperately hoping I'll apply for funding to research monster romance.

I am very excited to announce the CfP for our Special Issue "Romancing the Posthuman" for JPRS! Please share widely 😀

I just finished a 3D #embroidery rat. I adapted the pattern from a couple of paper-craft models from the Canon website. I'm also not very good at taking photos but this is the best I could do.

Just gave this a like, slightly bitterly, because although I wasn't expecting anything (and I published my last book for free online, because I earn almost nothing whatever I do), the situation does seem unfair to those of us "around the globe". But given how much else is unfair around the globe 🤷

Romance area chairs @jodimca.bsky.social and @heatherschell.bsky.social have put out the call for papers for PCA 2026! "Scholars, romance writers, romance readers/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome."

Has anyone on here help me with a query about Xochitl González's Olga Dies Dreaming and Cleyvis Natera's Neruda on the Park?

just taking a moment amidst all the copyright talk (I am cheering you on from the sidelines, authors) to point out one of the dumbest things about academia: for journal articles, at least in my field in the US, copyright is always with the journal, not the author

This includes some works on romance. And thanks to going off to check if I had all of them in the Romance Scholarship database, I realised I'd forgotten I had specific lesbian romance + m/m romance tags, and I've just been putting relevant items into the LGBTQ+ tag rsdb.vivanco.me.uk/index.php/ta...

This includes authors of academic works, by the way. I found two of my books and 2 articles may have been swept up in this. However, I can't add myself as a claimant - Courtney explains who can/can't in this thread.

I'm puzzled by this essay. On the one hand, I think it makes some interesting points, on the other, the grammar is often weird, it keeps repeating things, says it will investigate in depth/detail and then doesn't, and the three authors apparently refer to themselves in the singular.

Kind of perplexed by these statements about art. It's apparently centrist? And what's the ideology that all romance novels subscribe to that makes them not-art? This appeared in the journal "Ethics and Information Technology" and the authors admit they are not experts on art or literature.

You can search this database by genre and see which films were based on romances (although I'm not sure if they're all romances as we'd now define that): herhollywoodstory.com/database/fil...

So, I'm having problems with my threading/embedding, but bsky.app/profile/oliv... replied to this post by saying "This is a true and powerful bit of critique" and I was reminded of @javariafarooqui.bsky.social 's book about reading Regency romances

I've submitted a proposal and, even if my proposal isn't accepted, I'd love to see the volume succeed in getting to publication, because it's important to know how romance is shaped by/helps to shape what's going on in the world.

Deadline extended (to September 30) for essay proposals: Love and Resistance: Popular Romance Fiction and the Right, 2015-2025. drive.google.com/file/d/1p63T...

What the....indeed! We talk so much more about consent now than we used to that I stupidly thought that meant things like this wouldn't happen anymore. I stay disappointed in humans.

This CFP deadline is today, for anyone who is planning to submit!

Sare, Madelynn (2025). Assessing The Accessibility Of Queer Romance Book Covers As Digital Thumbnails: An Analysis Of Color Contrast, Colorblind Safety, And Typography Legibility. Master of Arts in Writing: Book Publishing, Portland State University.

Call for Proposals--deadline one week from today--for "Love and Resistance: Popular Romance Fiction and the Right, 2015-2025" (book project; I'm one of the co-editors) teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2025/08/cfp-...

Not 100% sure they're always subversive of norms (but van Engen doesn't say they always are) given how often tentacles seem to be used as additional phalli in monster romances I've read, but there's an important point here about which animals monsters are generally based on and why:

We're launching an emergency petition to demand the UK stops arms sales, RAF flights, and military backing immediately. For every 1,000 signatures, we’ll send a message straight to Keir Starmer. Let’s show him the public won’t stay silent while Gaza burns. act.38degrees.org.uk/act/stop-isr...

I know lots of you have strong opinions on this topic, so I hope this will be of interest: "You are being asked to participate in a survey of romance authors and readers that is being conducted by Prof. Bridget Kies in the Film Studies and Production program at Oakland University."

Choosing a corpus of texts to study/explaining why you've chosen to study particular texts got harder for romance scholars after we realised the flaws with the RITAs. I've noticed more of us citing Goodreads rankings, but it's worth noting that these need to be approached carefully too.

I'm writing about romance while traveling and without access to my bookshelves. So, super basic question for my romance peeps: Harlequin was reprinting M&B after '58. Bought M&B in '71. But... the reprints went both ways, yes? The NA/Harlequin titles were being reprinted as M&B in the UK too, y?

Call for Papers with a closing date of August 18, 2025 for an edited volume. It will be edited by Nattie Golubov, Eric Selinger and Charlotte Ireland

Free online until 11 August: new Cambridge Element "Inclusive Publishing and the Quest for Reading Equity" by Agata Mrva-Montoya

One thing about me is that I will never shut up about genre

For the people who've been noticing the scents of romance heroes. Fussy deodorant's using the tagline "Smell like a hero" (on the back, so it's not visible in this photo). But I'm amused because don't heroes frequently get described with three components to their scents? And these do too!

I'll be adding "The Sweet Bonds of Society: Food Symbolism in Bridgerton" to the RSDB anyway, but I'm curious: how much of this is only in the film version and how much is also in the novels? Does anyone know if there's lots about food in the books? www.sic-journal.org/Article/Inde...

Just noting that the "secret baby" plot's been around a long time. This article (in Spanish) discusses a Spanish romance from 1938 in which the heroine, discovering she's only been married for her money, disappears while pregnant, intent on living as a single mother.

I like this philosophical approach to a Silhouette romance:

Translation from the French of an unprecedented and shocking statement from the AFP news agency, saying that its journalists in Gaza are almost too weak to work anymore and are starving to death.

Just getting round to reading this, which is open access (free) and argues that whereas "extant histories have tended to feed myths about the Park that tap into and chime with wider myths about the Second World War" the romantic fiction can help change public understanding.

Going to share because this is another story about how things in nature/biology can be more complicated than the story humans have been telling themselves: " 'We tend to underestimate how much cooperation there is in nature,' says Erol Akçay, a theoretical biologist"

Very random post: I saw the photo in the OP and thought of this meme. Maybe they seem to have a similar look in their eyes? Or the man is holding his head at a blackbird-like angle?

This roundup of new work in romance scholarship is very long, because new things kept coming to my notice before I'd been able to read the ones I already knew about. I've finally caught up! I've mentioned quite a lot of them here already, but hopefully there'll still be things there of interest.

Was just reading through another dissertation, looking for quotes to add to the database entry when this analysis hit me in the face. It's obvious when it's pointed out, but for some reason I hadn't thought about it while reading MM paranormals.

New article by Denise H. Sutton on the history of Harlequin Mills & Boon in India www.proquest.com/scholarly-jo... Sutton emphasises the importance of the non-UK market to UK publishers:

I don't recall seeing this in romance novels. Is that because I'm not reading widely? Or maybe I'm skimming and/or not registering what's being described as "strangulation"?

Just finished reading something that described itself as a "cosy" fantasy. It was not cosy! There were two murders, backstory with murdered parents, set in an oppressive regime, multiple assaults on page. The female protag could barely bring herself to speak to male protag for about half the book.

Javaria Farooqui (@javariafarooqui.bsky.social‬) reviews Creating Identity: The Popular Romance Heroine’s Journey to Selfhood and Self-Presentation (2023), by Jayashree Kamblé (@profromance.bsky.social‬). Find the review here: doi.org/10.70138/TXE... (3/4)

'researchers...say that Annie Walker – a Victorian woman who began working at the observatory in 1879, when she was only 15 – ...observed thousands of stars herself....Walker was the first British professional female astronomer...paid a living wage by an observatory in the UK to chart the stars.'

Just thought this might be of interest to any romance authors writing about Victorian Britain. As mentioned, the pdf is free.

'George Harry Grey, the 7th earl of Stamford, commissioned the piece in 1855 after “locking horns” with high society, the National Trust said, by marrying Catherine Cox, who had earned a living as a bareback rider.'

Has anyone written a romance novel based on/inspired by Carmilla? [As an aside, this and The Lady in White are making me glad I'm a 20th/21-century Laura, who doesn't need to be rescued from dire peril.]

Was all excited to discover a new article which cited previous work on the topic which I hadn't seen before. Was a lot less excited after I'd checked them and it seems as though they don't actually exist. Put the article in the database with a long note about this. 😡

Two friends wrote a gay romance — and had to flee Russia. The novel became a bestseller. And is now available in English. Via Wapo (gift link) wapo.st/43ZtRys