I just realised that the modern equivalent of the breathy ... pauses that ... Cartland heroines ... indulged in... is blurbs written in extremely short sentences and paragraphs. Here's one which looks ridiculously like a poem because of how short the sentences and paragraphs are.

Feel like this might be a niche opportunity for an early career romance scholar. Bit of a long shot, but anyone working on London in Regencies or K J Charles, for example?

Hi DH friends, join us on Nov 10, 10-11 am CT, for “New Book History Research with Internet Data”, a hybrid panel sponsored by SHAR, to explore challenges and opportunities of using Internet data and digital methods for book history research. More info in the poster attached and comments :)

Joseph Crawford 's written an open access essay which addresses ethical issues he's considered while teaching a course about romantic fiction.

Come and study with me! Call for doctoral proposals in the field of Romance and/or Erotica at Falmouth University: www.falmouth.ac.uk/research/phd...

I'm sure you know about this already @romgothsam.bsky.social but I thought you might like the photo.

😭 I tried to verify my age so I could see a DM that had arrived for me, but the system didn't like my card and told me to provide another one, or use a different method. So, still no DMs for me!

"But read looking backward, having seen all that came later, the nurse novels come to look like more than a curiosity."

From Chloe Camara's "Threading the Narrative: A Critical Discourse Analysis of LGBTQ+ Resistance to Heteronormativity Through Textile Arts": Aaron McIntosh's "The Couch" 2010 "is a colonial-revival couch upholstered with quilted digital textile prints of romance novels and gay erotica."

As part of a book review in which "an interdisciplinary panel of historians and scholars of literature discuss important works of historical fiction" Julie-Marie Strange, Professor of Modern British History, wonders "maybe I am taking it too seriously, and perhaps it is just a romance".

Clothing choices hold meanings and are therefore important to analyse and understand. [To bring things back to romance, some critics said linked romances to the trivial because they describe clothing so much and no, that can also have meaning, as I discussed here: www.vivanco.me.uk/popular-roma... ]

📣📣📣

Red Squirrels always looking like they're about to politely interrupt

This update got very long, but maybe that means there's a higher chance of it including something you'd be interested in reading? Most of the entries are to open-access publications, so they're free to view.

I'm 😡 and 😱 and sending 🫂 to my US colleagues. [Words are failing me somewhat, hence the emojis.]

Amy Krug from the University of Dayton got in touch about their library's popular romance novel collection, which is being created by her students

@orkneylibrary.bsky.social I just saw this post from @metoffice.gov.uk and wondered if your photos of the dark sky would be starting soon.

This is for the UK Government, but also I thought it was worth sharing the photo of the extremely cute hedgehog (since there's no alt-text, the hedgehog is partially curled up, but facing the camera with a speech bubble saying "Can you help" as it looks out with bright black eyes + shiny nose)

@jenniebatchelor.bsky.social You've probably seen these already, but my brother and father went to Agatha Christie's house recently and my father happened to send me a photo of the copies of the Lady's Magazine which they have there.

"The professions assigned to protagonists + love interests in novels [...] signal more than just character backstory: they reveal symbolic hierarchies of labor, prestige + aspiration. A detective, a doctor, or a florist is [...] a shorthand for competence, authority, glamour, or ordinariness."

@dramyburge.bsky.social and Joseph Crawford have a short article out on the legacy and impact of Twilight

@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