It’s that time again! We’re soliciting proposals for the Popular Culture Association conference. This year it’s in San Antonio, TX. As always, it’s over Easter weekend!!! April 20-23, 2011. So if it’s a problem to be away from your family for Easter/Passover, we’ll miss you, but we’ll understand.

PCA is an amazing conference to go to to experience the joy and sheer intellectual brilliance of the field of Popular Romance Studies. We are truly a community. We hang around together all weekend, eating most of our meals together, talking between panels. It’s a VERY inviting conference for new scholars, and for interested non-scholars. We’ve had undergraduates and brand new graduate students present their papers at PCA and they loved it. We’re welcoming, friendly, fun, a little bawdy, and very very interesting.

With no further ado, here’s the full Call For Papers:

PCA/ACA 2010 National Conference
San Antonio, TX, April 20-23, 2011
Call For Papers: Romance Area

(Conference info: http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php)

Deadline for submission: December 15, 2010.

We are interested in any and all topics about or related to popular romance: all genres, all media, all countries, all kinds, and all eras. All representations of romance in popular culture (fiction, stage, screen—large or small, commercial, advertising, music, song, dance, online, real life, etc.), from anywhere and anywhen, are welcome topics of discussion.

We will consider proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.

If you are involved in the creative industry of popular romance (romance author/editor, film director/producer, singer/songwriter, etc.) and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the representations of popular romance, please contact us!

Some possible topics (although we are by no means limited to these):

* Popular Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation, Western and non-Western media, local and comparative approaches)
* Romance Across the Media: crossover texts and the relationships between romance fiction and romantic films, music, art, drama, etc.; also the paratexts and contexts of popular romance
* Romance High and Low: texts that fall between “high” and “low” culture, or that complicate the distinctions between these critical categories
* Romance Then and Now: representations of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern love
* Romancing the Marketplace: romantic love in advertising, marketing, and consumer culture
* Queering the Romance: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender romance, and representations of same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts
* BDSM Romance and representations of romantic/erotic power exchange
* Romance communities
* New Critical Approaches, such as readings informed by critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial studies, or empirical science (e.g., the neurobiology of love)
* The Politics of Romance, and romantic love in political discourse (revolutionary, reactionary, colonial / anti-colonial, etc.)
* Individual Creative Producers or Texts of Popular Romance (novels, authors, film, directors, writers, songwriters, actors, composers, dancers, etc.)
* Gender-Bending and Gender-Crossing / Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing / Media-Bending and Media-Crossing Popular Romance
* African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
* Young Adult Romance
* History of/in Popular Romance
* Romance and Region: places, histories, mythologies, traditions
* Definitions and Theoretical Models of Popular Romance: it’s not all just happily ever after

As we have done for the past three years, the Romance area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field of Popular Romance Studies. Of particular interest this year: the 2011 New York City conference for the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR), planning for the 2012 IASPR conference, and the first volume of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS).

Presenters are encouraged to make use of the new array of romance scholarship resources online, including the romance bibliography , the RomanceScholar listserv , and the open Forums at the webpage of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance .

Submit a one-page (200-300 words) proposal or abstract (via regular mail or e-mail) by December 15, 2010, to the Area Chairs in Romance:

Sarah S. G. Frantz
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Fayetteville State University
1200 Murchison Road
Fayetteville, NC 28301
(910) 672-1438
sarahfrantz@gmail.com

Darcy Martin
Adjunct Faculty, Women’s Studies
East Tennessee State University
12 Wataugua Court
Bluffton, SC 29909
(843)705-4861
martindj.etsu.edu

If you have any questions as all, please contact one or both of the area chairs. Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

Hope to see you there!
-Sarah

Not so fun things to remember the first week of school at a university.

1) Freshman have no clue what’s going on, but they’re really, really excited.

2) There always seems to be a returning senior who felt the need to bathe in beer to kick off the school year. (And then ride in the close confines of an elevator with yours truly–not okay, dude!)

3) Freshman have no clue what’s going on, but they’re really, really, really excited.

4) If you’re not on campus by 8am, you can kiss any chance of finding a parking space good-bye.

5) Freshman have no clue what’s going on, but they’re really, really, really, really excited.

6) Everyone will stop and ask where to find the bathroom. These people are usually freshman.

My fellow librarian, Dr. Revolution, had a housewarming party over the weekend, and I got to see the Prairie Debutante and her man, plus another manbrarian co-worker who I haven’t yet given a code name to. It was nice seeing them outside of work and relaxed (with the help of some alcohol, natch).

I brought pie. Chocolate silk, to be precise. And who doesn’t love chocolate? It’s like it’s own food group. That’ll warm up any house warming, don’t you think? She and her hubby have such a cute little place, with tons of books, of course. Hey, it’s the librarian code or something to have a houseful of them!

In the end…there were good times and a sugar rush to be had by all.

So, because I’m still sickly, and definitely was this past weekend, I had to miss out on a friend’s bridal shower. I’m so very sad about this, because she’s a good friend from library school and I think and her fiance and just terrific. However, it really is bad form to get the bride and all her attendants ill, you know?

So…wah! That’s my whine for the week. I hate being sick, and I hate even more that being sick made me miss out on good times with good friends. Luckily, the Professor Moriarty was available to make me feel better and keep me entertained, but I’m still bummed out.

I’m making it to the wedding next month, come hell or high water. Just say no to sick!

They’ve been testing the fire and earthquake drills in the library for the last 20 minutes. Which basically means they have the alarms blaring, and then they change the sound to something different and equally obnoxious.

They can’t do this after hours? I need to stab my eardrums just for the peace and quiet. Really, how am I supposed to prep for my meetings this afternoon? Gaaaaaaah!

I’ve got nothing much to say this week. I’m working at the library and we had our big faculty retreat this week, which just meant a super-duper holy-Jesus long meeting. No fun in Whoville.

I’m also working steadily on deadlines for my new books. I sent out some new novellas to Samhain, so there should be more details about that coming soon. And, the biggest news I have this week is that I changed agents and have signed with Roberta Brown of Brown Literary Agency.

That’s about it. School’s out for summer at the university, so the library is quiet and unexciting.

This bit of hilarity brought to you by the Mad Madam M.

Can’t. Stop. Laughing.

Yeah, yeah…I know the conference was over a week ago. I’m slow, what can I say? However, I give you the awesomeness that is the romance scholars at the Poplar Culture Conference. I went and got my scholar on for a few days and since I am never without my camera (hey, you never know when a Kodak Moment will pop up. Best to be prepared) there were of course many pictures.

The first night of PCA was just the small-ish group of us that have been getting together for a few years. So I went around the table and took pics. First up, (going left to right on all the pics) we have Angela Toscano and An Goris, two fabulously smart and funny women.

Then we have Eric Selinger, Jessica Miller, and Jayashree Kamble. Jessica reviews books and is all about ethics. She rocks. Eric and Jayashree presented the next day on Bollywood. They kicked off the awesomeness that was our Romance Area this year. They set the bar high…woot!

Then there’s Jayashree’s friend and I feel terrible that I’ve forgotten her name. Next to her is Tessa Kostelc, who studies food culture and applies it to Nora Roberts’s books. She’s all kinds of delightful. I wish you could all meet her. Then comes Angela’s mom, Margaret. And finally we have Sarah Frantz, Eric’s critique partner in crime. She was one of the ringleaders of the romance scholars this year, so kudos to her for a job well done!

Of course, I took a trip to the arch. Because I was in St. Louis. Duh. Didn’t this pic turn out cool, though? I loved it!

Sela Carsen drove a bunch of us over to the arch. I miss her already!

There were a bunch more pics, but I don’t want to overload everyone. Sabrina Darby presented there with her sister, and they were super sweet! Jeannie Lin and Amanda Berry also came and presented on a panel with Sela and me, but alas, I forgot to get a group shot of just us. Blonde moments, I has them. Overall, it was a great conference and a fun trip. Glad to be home though and gearing up for RT!

Copy edits have landed on my doorstep for my November book, Primal Heat. I forgot how long and intense this book is. Time to strap in an get it done, but it’s going to take a few days. Then I’m heading out of town for a conference, where I will also get to see my grandparents and M’s parents. I love getting visitation time in when I have to travel for work. Makes it all shiny and awesome.

Anywho, all that means it’s going to be quiet on the blog until I resurface on Sunday.

Something to keep you entertained while I’m away!

Not much going on today, really. Working on a story for Samhain, another for Kensington, but more focused on getting some conference presentations squared away. The scholarly writing goes so much more slowly than the creative writing. It’s a totally different process. No wonder textbooks can take years and years to write and I can finish a novel in six months.

I’m packing up for one of the conferences this weekend. I have my To Do list together, because if something isn’t on The List, it doesn’t get done. My brain is on a little piece of paper. I think it fell out in grad school and landed on the colored sticky notepad I had back then. Now I need a sticky note to think. Or something. It sounded better in my head.

Anyhoo, heading out at the crack of dawn on Wednesday of next week, and can’t wait to see all my scholar peeps. I can pretend I’m smart and stuff. But, you know, I’ll bring my sticky notes with me, just in case.