CFP: Romance and Popular Romance Fiction – NEPCA Hybrid Fall Conference 2024

deadline for submissions: 

June 15, 2024

full name / name of organization: 

Northeast Popular Culture Association

contact email: 

wwagner@jwu.edu.

The Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) Romance and Popular Romance Fiction Area invites submissions for NEPCA’s annual conference to be held online October 3 – 5, 2024, and in person at Nichols College, MA. Virtual sessions will take place on Thursday evening and Friday morning via Zoom. In-person sessions will take place on Friday evening and Saturday morning with broadcast via Zoom.

Papers, and other types of submissions, should address popular culture explicitly, while methodologies from across disciplines, cultural contexts, a variety of media and historical periods are all encouraged. This area accepts papers from undergraduate and graduate students, postgraduate researchers, and independent scholars, including proposals for full panels and/or roundtables.

We welcome a wide variety of papers related to romance and popular romance fiction. Possible approaches can include cultural studies, narrative analysis, issues of representation, production and dissemination of romance fiction, audience studies, the public uses of romance fiction/s, and more.

We are also interested in forming panels around some of the following topics:

• Romance and fanfiction – fandom as a training ground for developing romance writers

• The romance industry and social media marketing

• Romance re-imagining itself – How does contemporary romance fiction take on and transform its own genre? How does it re-make the “pirate romance,” the “arranged marriage” trope, fairy tales and mythological re-tellings?

• Romance fiction in languages other than English

• Romance fiction adaptions – from page to screen

This call will be open until June 15, 2024. You can submit your proposal at this link, which will ask the following questions about your proposal:

• Proposal Type (Single Presentation, Panel, or Roundtable)

• Subject Area

• Working Title

• Academic Affiliation (if any)

• Abstract (250 words)

• Short bio (50-200 words)

If you have questions about the NEPCA Conference please see:  2024 Conference Page  or feel free to reach out to NEPCA’S Romance Area Chair: Wendy Wagner, Johnson & Wales University, at wwagner@jwu.edu.