That was ALL KINDS of awesome!
And hey, happy Independence Day to all you Americans.
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
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by SB Sarah • Tuesday, November 28, 2006 at 09:07 AM
Back in the day, when I was an undergrad and grad student, I did a good number of presentations of scholarly papers on pretty much whatever topics I could get accepted by the conference’s planning committee. I’ve presented papers on using email and instant messenger to teach college composition to learning disabled students, and on themes of rebirth and repentance in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
I’ve also had a ball of a time presenting at Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association regional and national conferences because then you’d get to sit in on sessions addressing anything from Buffy (a whoooole lotta Buffy, come to think of it, and all things Joss Whedon) to religious themes in the Back to the Future trilogy. The PCA/ACA conferences were fun because the professors and students presenting were all focusing on popular culture topics that they were interested in and passionate about, and most of the people attending were open to the idea that sometimes, current American popular culture not only enjoys but demands scholarly examination. Plus it’s fun to flex the lit crit muscles on topics like Survivor and Charles in Charge.
So I’m pretty gleeful that I’ve been forwarded some calls for papers for a book of critical essays examining Jennifer Cruisie’s novels. And more recently, snarkhunter sent me an invitation to submit for the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Regional Conference panel on “Romance Fiction: Rumpled Sheets - Romance Writer’s & Writing.” The CFP states,
We are looking for individual paper proposal submissions and/or panel proposals for this unique genre of fiction. Topics might include, but are not limited to, issues such as archetypes, the body, conformity, conventions, culture, ethnic roles, gender, genre, the hero and heroine, history, ideal female/male representations, love, myth, power, sex and sex roles, social aspects, social expectations, subversion, technology, transcendence, values, virtues.
Well now, that covers quite a bit - but sad I am to notice no specific invitations to discuss the scholarly ramifications of postmodern mantitty! There are plenty of romance novels that invite critical analysis, though.
It’s been awhile since I’ve attended any college conferences, but I know a good number of the readers here are either in school, teaching or professor-ing, or building a base of published scholarly articles that address romantic fiction. Have there been more papers and panels that talk about romance, or is romance still mainly appearing only in the pop-culture conferences and the RWA regional and national conferences? And if you were writing a critical essay on a romance novel, what would you write about?
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Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
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