romance scholarship

Have you ever wished you could just escape the anxieties and mundanity of modern life by traveling back to Qing Dynasty China? How does time travel romance create a simulacra of a “glorious and wealthy feudal past” that allows audiences to “effortlessly become a love interest and an admired woman through the male gaze shaped by multiple admirers”?

Guest: Dr. Huike Wen is a professor teaching media studies and global cultural studies at Willamette University, and is the author of Romance in Post-Socialist Chinese Television. We discuss a chapter on time travel romance that discusses two 2011 Chinese TV dramas: Startling By Each Step and Palace.

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Time Travel Romance: A Fantasy Escape to a Glorious Space

Is true love real or fiction? Is romantic love in fiction unreal but not untrue? How do romance novels play with fiction and reality, and how do some other disciplines explore similar questions in their own fields? Guest: Dr. Eric Selinger 

Unreal But Not Untrue

Journalist E. Jean Carroll hopped a ride on the Love Train with dozens of romance authors in 1983, hoping to discover "how to catch a man." But did she actually discover who women* in America were fantasizing about being? Steve Ammidown, archivist and historian of the romance genre, joins me to discuss Where the Heart Roams, a 1987 documentary about romance authors, culture clashes, silk sheets and lavender sachets, men with a lot of flash (there aren't many), and many conflicting theories about how to catch a man.

How To Catch A Man on the Love Train

Proving once and for all, using science, the truth of the romance reader stereotype. Warning: this research is about how romance novels and readers are perceived, not the actual reality. 

096. Scientific Proof of the Romance Reader Stereotype (Finally)

Suspend your assumptions about rare books - Rebecca Romney shares how rare book collection can be for everyone, and is a critical component of preserving romance genre history. Work by marginalized people has frequently been considered unimportant or devalued in the rare book world - learn how Rebecca's work (part detective, part scholar, part marketer) is important not just for romance scholars, but for all of us, and how we all have a role to play.

088. 9 Reasons Why Rare Romance Books Matter, with Rebecca Romney (#7 will surprise you!)

Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman, host of Black Romance Podcast, uses a multi-modal cultural studies perspective to engage students in critical engagement with Black romance texts to "liberate learners from the mimicry of the powerful."

082. Critical Reading as Liberation from Mimicry of the Powerful

"Archives don't tell us everything. You should question, what texts did you use? What did you look at? What did you not look at? What did you miss? What questions did you ask? What questions did you not ask? And I think that's when we start to get outside of this problem of history, capital H, and move into histories, small "h" pluralized, and think about what appears first and what we do underneath." -Dr. Margo Hendricks

081. From History to histories

Have you ever wondered when Shelf Love would finally cover the unholy marriage of Colonialism, Imperialism, Capitalism, and White Supremacy? Dr. Margo Hendricks drops in to explain why you can't talk about just one because they're inextricably linked. Yes, this is still a romance novel podcast!

080. I Now Pronounce You  Colonialism, Capitalism,  & White Supremacy 

Romance scholar Eric Selinger explores different types questions that have been asked about popular romance (not enough), how romance research has come in waves (three, to be precise), and asks "how can I make this romance more interesting?" (you always can).

063. The Three Waves of Romance with Eric Selinger

Jayashree Kamble, a romance scholar and Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, joins me to discuss the various ways romance can be studied. She gives a brief overview of the history of the romance genre and pop culture research, why she doesn't encounter the hierarchy of taste when teaching romance, and explains who romance scholarship is for. 

060. Romance Research with Jayashree Kamble

Season 2 Premiere!

Hsu-Ming Teo, a cultural historian and romance scholar, joins me to discuss her research on cultural authenticity in east asian american romance novels, among many other fascinating topics such as love as a commodity, intimacy, Australian convict romances, historical accuracy, and why impact still rules, but intent may matter more than we think. We also discuss novels by Ruby Lang, Courtney Milan, Helen Hoang, and Jeannie Lin.

058. East Asian American Romances with Cultural Historian Hsu-Ming Teo

Learn more about a new podcast that is an oral history project for Black Romance: "The Black Romance Podcast features weekly conversations with Black writers, editors, and scholars of historical and contemporary popular romance fiction. Julie Moody-Freeman and guests talk about a range of experiences: their difficulties trying to publish love stories with Black characters; their favorite books; writing and teaching about black romance fiction; traditional vs self-publishing; publishing queer romance fiction; and their recently released books."

romance scholarship

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