What do women want? \u00a0According to contemporary science and popular culture, female sexuality is nearly as mysterious now as it was when Freud described it as a \u201cdark continent.\u201d \u00a0Despite three waves of feminism,\u00a0there is still confusion about women\u2019s sexual pleasure: \u00a0it remains under-researched, underrepresented in sex education and, apparently, still elusive for some women. \u00a0Yet the genre of women\u2019s romance fiction has always, confidently and consistently, articulated and produced<\/i> women\u2019s sexual pleasure. \u00a0Despite science\u2019s tepid efforts to fathom female orgasm in the early- to mid-century, and right up to the FDA\u2019s approval of a misleadingly described \u201cfemale libido drug\u201d in 2015, women\u2019s romance has, in the same period, generated an innovative and evocative language for portraying women\u2019s erotic experience. \u00a0While the history of twentieth century female orgasm is marked by the work of psychologists, social scientists, feminist sexologists, and activists such as Freud, Marie Bonaparte, Wilhelm Reich, Marie Stopes, and Shere Hite, or on mid-century \u201chigh-brow\u201d fiction writers celebrated for their transgressive depictions of women\u2019s sexuality (e.g., James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Ana\u00efs Nin, among others), this presentation will argue that women\u2019s romance is an equally crucial archive of knowledge about and expression of female orgasm. \u00a0Close readings of two highly successful and influential women\u2019s romance novels of the modernist period, The Sheik<\/i> and Three Weeks<\/i>, will show how romance authors forged an orgasmic lexicon that balanced explicit and evasive, novel and familiar, and clich\u00e9 and innovative imagery. \u00a0Working through florid and fanciful euphemisms for orgasm (\u201ccrisis,\u201d awakening, swooning, spasm. . . ) and suggestive allusions to anatomy and sensation, the language of women\u2019s romance needs to be understood in relation to censorship as well as tacit contracts between authors and readers that reflect ideas about female desire and sexual response that can be counterintuitive and politically\/intellectually disquieting. \u00a0Romance writers have long known and mobilized the character of women\u2019s fantasy and sexual response that scientists are only now discovering. \u00a0Finally, this talk will extend these insights to the genre-bending phenomenon Fifty Shades of Grey<\/i>, through which we may measure the distance women have and have not come in terms of orgasmic representation across the past century.<\/p>\nJulie Cassiday, Williams College: \u00a0\u201cA World Without Safe-Words: \u00a0Fifty Shades of Russian Grey\u201d<\/h3>\n
Advertised as \u201cThe Russian Fifty Shades of Grey<\/i>,\u201d the trilogy of romances by the pseudonymous Alisa Klever represents an adaptation of erotic BDSM to Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia. \u00a0Despite its obvious debt to EL James\u2019s novels, Klever\u2019s trilogy is a uniquely Russian work that both reflects and comments on its social context. \u00a0Revolving around the damaged yet forceful Maksim Korshunov, who demands total erotic obedience from the hyper-feminine Arina Krylova, Klever\u2019s trilogy creates a fictional world, in which the domination and submission underlying the gender regime in contemporary Russia become explicit. \u00a0The bondage, dominance, and submission that characterize sex in Klever\u2019s trilogy create a space where bodies, emotions, material consumption, and citizenship all intermesh, allowing the author to demonstrate the beauty of well-regulated intercourse among these four, as well as the ugliness when such intercourse goes awry.<\/p>\n
By depicting \u201cthe real Russian view of love in all of its manifestations,\u201d Klever\u2019s books illustrate the prevalence of a distinctly post-feminist eroticism in Putin\u2019s Russia. Women like the fictional Arina Krylova represent the Russian Federation\u2019s ideal citizens, since they display those traits deemed most desirable by Putin\u2019s neonational, neoliberal regime, namely, a strong work ethic, dedication to marriage and family, a modest materialism, and a pleasure-providing self-discipline. \u00a0In addition, the substantive changes Klever renders to the Fifty Shades<\/i> formula include a sinister sadistic subplot\u2014without any corresponding masochism\u2014that fundamentally alters the significance of BDSM in these Russian books. \u00a0No longer limited to neoliberal transgression-as-liberation, BDSM comes to represent all forms of violence done to the individual in contemporary Russia. \u00a0As a result, Klever\u2019s trilogy not only depicts, but more importantly critiques contemporary Russian gender roles, urging its female readers to expand those spaces where they can form community and exercise autonomy.<\/p>\nEric Selinger, DePaul University: \u00a0\u201cXenophile\u2019s Paradox: \u00a0Reading for Pleasure Across the Great Divides\u201d<\/h3>\n
In a familiar passage from The Pleasure of the Text<\/i>, Barthes asserts that the \u201ctext of pleasure\u201d is one that \u201ccontents, fills, grants euphoria,\u201d since it \u201ccomes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading.\u201d \u00a0Barthes\u2019 description resonates with the more recent (and rather more poignant) observations of Lauren Berlant that \u201cmodes of personhood and aesthetic events are mutually mediated by the affective expectations congealed around generic mappings,\u201d such that the \u201claw of genre\u201d at once constrains the reader and allows her \u201cto pre-experience the flow of unconflictedness unachievable elsewhere than in the genre\u2019s horizon of expectations\u201d (The Female Complaint<\/i>, 254). What, then, might it mean to \u201cread for pleasure\u201d across the great divides of national, cultural, racial, or other difference: \u00a0divides which might well disrupt those \u201caffective expectations\u201d and that \u201cflow of unconflictedness,\u201d leaving us too discomforted for euphoria, too unsettled for comfort? \u00a0In this talk, I will sift through the multiplicity of experiences that we lump together as \u201creading for pleasure\u201d: \u00a0some present in Victor Nell\u2019s psychological model of \u201cludic reading\u201d; others surprisingly absent from that model, like the gratifications of allusive play, the moral pleasures of sympathy and outrage, and the consumerist pleasures of social distinction. \u00a0My goal is to illuminate the negotiations of familiarity, alterity, appropriation, and learning involved in a xenophilic practice of reading popular romance fiction, a genre renowned for its cultural conventionalities, yet one which circulates on a global, increasingly multicultural scale. \u00a0I will also look at how particular romance novels represent and think through the complexities and, perhaps, the paradoxes of xenophilia, enacting the freshness, excitement, fear, and erotic attraction of encountering the \u201cforeign\u201d not only through twists of plot and character, but through the contrapuntal deployment of contrasting genres, discourses, ranges of reference, and cultural traditions.<\/p>\nPanel 2: \u00a0New Subjects and Audiences \u00a0(Saturday, April 22, 10:15 am – 12:15 pm)<\/h2>\n
Sonali Dev, author: \u00a0\u201cGenre Structure and Learning to Dance Within its Boundaries\u201d<\/h3>\n
Genre structure can be at once incredibly freeing and challenging to a writer. \u00a0On one hand you have a roadmap, while on the other hand you\u2019re telling a story where the forward motion is not fueled by the ending alone but by the crafting and the telling. \u00a0For readers, genre structure provides the familiarity and comfort that draws them to reading romance with the promise of both emotional upheaval and satisfaction. \u00a0Personally, I\u2019m interested in pushing the boundaries of the genre in terms of story while still utilizing convention-familiarity to diversify the worlds and settings. \u00a0I\u2019ll explore the two unlikely things that have helped me with this: \u00a0my background in architecture, where you get to dream in form as long as you understand structure and design requirements, and my lifelong interest in Bollywood films, which share the same audience expectations and storytelling conventions as the romance genre.<\/p>\n
It is well known that romance novels are overwhelmingly white where romantic protagonists and their communities are concerned, even if these societies are culturally diverse in reality. \u00a0Romance scholar Jayashree Kambl\u00e9 argues that \u201cthe alleged \u2018universal\u2019 nature of mass-market romance fiction\u201d contains \u201ca narrative that normativizes Westernness \u2013 and more accurately, whiteness.\u201d \u00a0Mallory Jagodzinski notes that the industry \u201chas had a fraught relationship with race,\u201d commenting that \u201cstories about characters of color or stories written by authors of color are automatically slated in the subgenre of multicultural and ethnic romance,\u201d resulting in \u201cless author support and less resources to market the novel, leading to less reader consumption and less profit for the (often nonwhite) author.\u201d \u00a0Romance writers and readers of different ethnicities have challenged this white norm. \u00a0Black American romance is a flourishing subgenre, albeit with its own problems of market limitations, and Hispanic romance publishing is a fast-growing phenomenon. \u00a0However, romance novels with East Asian protagonists are few and far between, leading writers, readers and bloggers with an East-Asian background to establish websites that compile lists of such books, as well as frustrated blogs that ask \u201cAre Asian Men Not Sexy?\u201d and \u201cWhere the Hell Are All the Asians?\u201d<\/p>\n
This paper briefly outlines the rise of romance novels featuring East Asian protagonists and considers the extent to which they feature or engage with issues that are deemed problematic for mainstream East Asian literature in English; issues such as boutique multiculturalism, the interplay between cultural and gender stereotypes, representativeness, the creation of \u201cAsia\u201d and the homogenization of \u201cAsians,\u201d pressures towards cultural assimilation, hybridity, the dominance of interracial relations, and a preference for East Asian stories to be set \u201clong ago and far away in a land of exotic people.\u201d \u00a0It then discusses the East Asian romances of three of successful novelists in this field: \u00a0USA Today<\/i> bestselling author Jade Lee\u2019s 19th-century Tigress series, Jeannie Lin\u2019s Tang Dynasty romances, and Camy Tang\u2019s Asian chick lit\/Christian inspirational romance novels.<\/b><\/p>\nJayashree Kambl\u00e9, LaGuardia Community College: \u00a0\u201cWhen Wuxia<\/i> Met Romance: \u00a0The Pleasures and Politics of Multiculturalism in Sherry Thomas\u2019s My Beautiful Enemy<\/i>\u201d<\/h3>\n
That the romance genre has an international readership (in English and in translation) is widely documented, as is the fact that the texts are predominantly Anglo-American despite the growth of African-American romance. \u00a0The multicultural strain has expanded in recent years, however, with one or both protagonists occasionally being of Asian\/Latino\/multiracial descent. \u00a0While this is often done in token ways (for instance, through the names and descriptions of characters\u2019 skin\/hair in Nalini Singh\u2019s paranormal romances), a case study of Sherry Thomas\u2019s Qing-era My Beautiful Enemy<\/i> (with its prequel, The Hidden Blade<\/i>) allows for a more fruitful discussion of changing representations of diversity and its appeal for readers. \u00a0MBE<\/i>\u2019s heroine is of mixed Anglo-Chinese ethnicity, and the novel\u2019s plot draws on wuxia<\/i>, a literary and cinematic genre that has a century-long history, both in mainland China, as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand. \u00a0Thomas, who grew up in China, is familiar with it, and mentions it as an inspiration for these texts, but even readers who may not know the term might find it appealing. \u00a0For one, it features a warrior heroine (a type that has acquired currency in paranormal and urban fantasy romance), and second, it taps into the appreciation for (or at least, familiarity with) wuxia<\/i> outside China\u2014known to worldwide audiences through its manifestation in Asian martial arts movies (with the hits Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon<\/i> and House of Flying Daggers<\/i> most widely recognized by non-Chinese audiences). \u00a0MBE<\/i>\u2019s plot enacts the genre closely, particularly through the aforementioned heroine: \u00a0Bai Ying-Hua is a righteous knight errant intervening in nineteenth-century Chinese national politics by martial means that are almost supernatural. \u00a0Her journey would appeal to existing fans of wuxia<\/i>, might introduce new audiences to this Chinese genre, and deepens the diversity of romance fiction far beyond the token inclusion of a multi-ethnic character.<\/p>\nLen Barot, author and publisher: \u00a0\u201cLesbian Romances and the International Market in the Digital Age\u201d<\/h3>\n
In contrast to foreign sales of \u00a0\u201cmainstream\u201d romances, the market for translations of LGBTQ genre fiction is small. \u00a0Sale of translation rights depends upon the interest and financial means of small \u201cniche\u201d publishers in countries where an identifiable audience exists. \u00a0Of the 1,000 titles published by Bold Strokes Books, an exclusively LGBTQ publisher of genre fiction, less that 6% have been translated into Spanish, Russian, French, or Dutch (in that order of frequency). \u00a0All of the translated titles are lesbian genre titles: \u00a0contemporary romance, romantic intrigue, or erotica, and in the majority of cases the same titles are requested for translation.<\/p>\n
As a result, the focus of the international market for LGBTQ titles is to an English-reading population, and the majority of titles sold internationally are lesbian romances. \u00a0Prior to the \u201cdigital\u201d revolution beginning in late 2010 when the Kindle and other electronic reading devices made digital versions easily accessible, attainable, and affordable, print dominated foreign sales. \u00a0Shipping costs often priced LGBTQ trade paperbacks out of the competitive market in foreign countries, and overall sales were small. Post-2010, digital sales far outstrip print sales, particularly in the international market place, allowing more readers to easily obtain previously expensive or unavailable titles.<\/p>\n
This study looks at the distribution of digital lesbian romance sales via our largest vendor in the international marketplace from 2011-2015 in terms of the proportion of sales by country, as well as a comparison of popular titles in the foreign marketplace versus the United States. These trends allow us to anticipate overall sales, as well as to competitively price titles for the broadest audience.<\/p>\n
New York Times<\/i> bestselling author Eloisa James (Shakespeare professor Mary Bly, by another name) will dissect the foreign market from the perspective of a writer published in over twenty countries. \u00a0She will explain the difference between keeping and giving away foreign rights, international rights agents, international book fairs, and international readers. \u00a0She will look in particular at reader behavior \u2014 why Julia Quinn needed a bodyguard in Brazil, for example. and why readers fainted on meeting Lisa Kleypas in Germany.<\/p>\nKaty Regnery, author: \u00a0\u201cFrom Stay-at-Home Mom to NYT Bestseller in 30 Months: \u00a0A First-Hand Perspective on the Digital Revolution in the Romance Publishing Industry\u201d<\/h3>\n
When I graduated from Kenyon College in 1994, I had never taken a single business course, nor had my formal education included any English courses after high school. \u00a0But somehow, I published my first book in September 2013, wrote and published twenty more full-length novels over the ensuing 30 months, and found myself at #14 on the New York Times<\/i> bestseller list by May 2016.<\/p>\n
Some quick facts about my career so far:<\/p>\n
In my presentation, I will provide a first-hand perspective on the ways in which e-commerce, new online tools for authors, and social media are changing the romance publishing industry and allowing writers to manage their careers increasingly independently.<\/p>\n
Hosting a global romance community at an American-based web site is an equal mix of challenges and opportunities for learning. \u00a0As I have learned in the 12 years since the founding of SBTB, the more things change, the more some frustrations stubbornly remain the same: logistical limitations like DRM, geographic price restrictions, and limited access to new and older romance titles continue to frustrate readers. More importantly, however, I am of the strongly-held opinion that every romance reader should see more than just her own emotional reflection in romance. \u00a0The genre still needs to better resemble the people who read and write it – culturally, religiously, ethnically, linguistically, physically. etc. \u00a0In my presentation, I will share some of the insights I have learned from interviews and podcast recordings with readers and writers in underserved and underrepresented communities inside and outside the US. \u00a0What are they reading, what do they want more of, and, most importantly, how are they changing the genre for the better? \u00a0The genre needs to evolve to better serve its readership, but as readers who embrace narratives steeped in optimism know, a happily ever after is always possible.<\/p>\n
This talk will examine Harlequin\u2019s global markets and how this publisher is well positioned to satisfy the voracious appetites of romance readers worldwide. \u00a0An icon in the romance genre, Harlequin has created\u2014and continues to create\u2014ambitious publishing programs, delivering romance in as many as 32 languages and selling in more than\u00a090 international markets. \u00a0Ms. Bloom will touch upon cultural, linguistic, and topical diversity in select programs (France, Italy, Japan, Australia), listing examples of how we market differently to accommodate our readers. \u00a0In order to operate effectively, the publisher has deepened its understanding of global markets and added complexity to its structure.<\/p>\n
The rewritings of Pride and Prejudice<\/i> on the Chinese Web fit the definition of fanfic in that they deliberately borrow from an original work, are written without the initial creator\u2019s expressed permission, and are not published professionally for profit. \u00a0But they also demonstrate a unique characteristic: \u00a0deploying the device of time-travel to insert Chinese men or women into the canon universe.<\/p>\n
The protagonists can take up any roles in the original, or they become newly created classmates, friends, or siblings of existing characters. \u00a0They can maintain the original romantic \u201ccoupling\u201d (CP), choose different partners, or even enter into a homoerotic rather than heterosexual relationship. \u00a0\u00a0But they all accomplish great things: \u00a0not just finding eligible suitors, but also becoming successful in business, military, politics, or medicine. \u00a0Short on historical accuracy, the fanfic works nonetheless incorporate many Chinese elements: \u00a0Chinese objects, Chinese cuisine, and even Chinese social media.<\/p>\n
Any fanfic provides the combined pleasure of repetition and difference. \u00a0It also allows fans to appropriate from existing cultural products to hone creative skills and to benefit from the original\u2019s cultural cachet. \u00a0Further, P& P fanfic serves specific personal and political ends for the women who write and read them. \u00a0Some rewrite the fate of the \u201cwronged woman,\u201d whose victimization in the canon universe has roused indignation and generated a tale of redemption. \u00a0Others use fanfic to recast ideal masculinity and femininity. \u00a0Finally, reworking this Western classic helps authors and readers re-imagine Sino-British relation and position themselves in today\u2019s complex world.<\/p>\n
Discussing, reinterpreting, and refashioning the source text alongside like-minded insiders produce explanation and validation of Chinese women\u2019s lives, offering them a more satisfying experience than reading alone. \u00a0Ultimately, the works discussed provide examples of the \u201copen canon\u201d that fanfic can create, while querying the dynamics between cultural globalization and localization.<\/p>\n
Contemporary American romance novels often employ a trope that has a rich history in European literature: \u00a0the use of books and personal libraries as a means of characterizing the hero and\/or heroine. \u00a0Just as Tatiana explores Onegin\u2019s library in Pushkin\u2019s Eugene Onegin<\/i>, the heroes and heroines of contemporary American romances, often learn about potential romantic partners by looking at and even reading their books. \u00a0Moreover, clear patterns dictate the books that fill characters\u2019 shelves. \u00a0The heroines of contemporary American romances are depicted as passionate consumers of romance novels so frequently that this might almost be deemed a standard feature of the genre: \u00a0their shelves and Kindles are full of popular romances, typically in the same subgenre as the book in which they appear. \u00a0They often reference favorite authors and compare their own romantic plight and hero of preference to the plot details and characters that they recall from favorite books.<\/p>\n
Heroes in contemporary American romance novels are also often explicitly labeled as readers. \u00a0Although predictably most have stereotypically masculine taste in books (military histories, crime novels\u2026), romance novels do sometimes appear on their shelves. \u00a0Moreover, even alpha heroes may pick up romance novels at key turning points as a way of learning about the heroine and her desires.<\/p>\n
My paper considers the trope of the personal library in contemporary romance and the extent to which it carries over into the romance novels that Russian authors have begun to produce in recent years in imitation of Western models. \u00a0Are Russian heroines also frequently identified as passionate consumers of romance fiction? \u00a0Do heroes in these novels ever dip into romance novels as a way of exploring female desire?<\/p>\n
The discussion of romance novels and their permissibility in Islam frequently revolves around the central concerns of whether the romances depict sexual relationships in Shariah (Islamic law) compliant (\u201chalal\u201d) ways, the glorification of non-Shariah compliant sexual activity, and the intent of the Muslims who read and write these romances. \u00a0Perhaps due to the predominant scholarly\/jurist consensus about the parameters and dubiousness of romance novels as permissible, while of course Muslim romances exist, they have never become mainstream except in a few Muslim majority countries in Asia.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, looking at existing Muslim romances may offer insight into the varying constructions of Shariah-compliant romantic love in diverse Muslim communities worldwide. \u00a0To this end, this paper will consider the ways that depictions of romantic love have engaged with the spectre of Shariah compliance in Muslim romances from Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n
By looking at Indonesian blockbuster romance Ayat-ayat Cinta <\/i>or \u201cVerses of Love\u201d (Habiburrahman El Shirazy), the critically acclaimed British romance The Translator <\/i>(Leila Aboulela) and the Young Adult romance She Wore Red Trainers <\/i>(Na\u2019ima B. Robert), this paper will discuss how these influential novels and novelists have shaped conceptions of the genre of Muslim romance such as it is. \u00a0This paper will also explore the ways that these novels have engaged and contested Shariah compliance and have been shaped by their particular cultural and literary contexts.<\/p>\nHeather Schell, George Washington University: \u00a0\u201cAfter \u2018I Do\u2019: \u00a0Turkish Harlequin Readers Reimagine the Happy Ending\u201d<\/h3>\n
In 2012, an online survey presented Turkish Harlequin readers with an excerpt from Shirley Jump\u2019s Back to Mr. and Mrs.<\/i>, in which Cade (the hero) and his father argue painfully about Cade\u2019s plan to take time off work to reconcile with his estranged wife. \u00a0The survey asked these readers whether or not they had read the book and then presented them with open-ended questions about how that scene would resolve, as well as about what would happen once the protagonists renewed their marriage vows. \u00a0Research on romantic beliefs suggests that romantic Americans and Turks have similar core convictions about the power of true love to overcome obstacles. \u00a0However, because the United States is one of the world\u2019s most individualistic countries, while Turkey is one of the most collectivist, we might expect to see that conflicts between family and romantic relationships offer a more serious challenge to romantic outcomes in Turkey than they would in the United States. \u00a0This paper explores Turkish readers\u2019 ideas about how to resolve the challenge posed by Cade\u2019s father to the novel\u2019s romantic relationship; it also analyzes the participants\u2019 imagined endings to explore the role of family in the happy ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Panel 1: \u00a0Theories of Pleasure \u00a0(Saturday, April 22, 8:00 – 10:00 am) Laura Frost, Stanford University: \u00a0\u201cStories of O: \u00a0The Language of Orgasm in Women\u2019s Romance\u201d What do women want? \u00a0According to contemporary science and popular culture, female sexuality is nearly as mysterious now as it was when Freud described it as a \u201cdark continent.\u201d Read more about Abstracts for Presentations<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-18","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/romance-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}