Recipients of the Academic Research Grant
Below is a list of RWA Academic Research Grant recipients and summaries of their projects.
2022
Jo Coghlan, PhD; Lisa J. Hackett, PhD [University of New England (Australia)]
Locating Authenticity in Crime Romance Novels: Perspectives from International Readers and Writers
The focus of this research is to examine how readers and writers of contemporary crime romance fiction negotiate issues and tensions of accuracy and authenticity in the genre, and the different levels of accuracy that may be wanted by readers. Crime can occur in any romance novel, however, there is a distinct subgenre of crime romance fiction. One prominent series is Harlequin Mills & Boon’s Intrigue series which promises the reader can “[d]ive into action-packed stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Solve the crime and deliver justice at all costs” (Harlequin 2022a). Crime romance fiction can be set in any era and can occur across various romance subgenres. This research is focused on romance novels from across the spectrum that have a strong focus on crime.
Dr. Hyerim Cho; Dr. Denice Adkins (University of Missouri)
Romance Readers Experience Webtoon: An Examination of Reader Engagement with New Media
The romance novel is traditionally viewed as a text-mediated form – one that is published in stand-alone or series format and experienced in print or audiobook form. Romantic comedy movies, comics, and manga expand access to romantic storylines. In this study, we investigate Webtoon as a new medium for presenting romance stories. In this proposal, we want to 1) highlight the experiences of readers who read both “traditional” romance novels and Webtoon with romantic storylines, 2) investigate the appeals of both formats for them, and 3) discuss how the Webtoon format may provide unique appeals in the reading experience.
2021
Dr. Julie E. Moody-Freeman
‘Lift as We Climb’: Black Romance Writers, Social Justice, and Institution Building
Grant funds will be used to aid in her research that will examine black writers’ representations of racial uplift in their romantic plots and produce one season of the Black Romance Podcast, which documents the history of the production and publication of Black Romance through Dr. Moody-Freeman’s conversations with writers, editors, journalists, and scholars.
Hannah E. Scupham
Sensual Politics: Modern Romance Novel Reading and Reimagination of the Victorian Past
Grant funds will be used to fund dissertation research. Scupham’s work focuses on how contemporary popular romance novels set in the nineteenth-century century seek to challenge and change modern readers’ imaginations of the nineteenth-century, specifically on issues of gender, sexuality, and race.
2020
Dr. Diane L. Velasquez, Dr. Jennifer Campbell-Meier, and Dr. Diana Hodge
Australasian Librarians’ Perceptions of Romance Readers and Novels: A Mixed Methods Study
RWA awarded funding to Dr. Velasquez, Dr. Campbell-Meier, and Dr. Hodge to research whether or not Australasian romance readers’ use of public libraries in Australasia (term for Australia and New Zealand) are the same as North America. The study will be a mixed methods study to find out if Australasian readers are or are not using public libraries to source romantic fiction, to study the provision of libraries’ romance fiction, and librarians’ attitudes towards romance readers and novels.
Angela Maria Hart
The Romance Genre Fandom in the Digital Age: E-reading the Romance
RWA awarded funding to Angela Maria Hart to examine romance readers’ demographics and their motivations for their investment in the romance genre as well as how and where fans are discussing the romance genre. Hart's overall goal is to produce an updated fandom study, inspired by Radway, examining romance genre readers in the digital age.
2019
E.E. Lawrence
“She didn’t really look like a librarian to him”: An Analysis of Professional Stereotype Reaffirmation and Resistance in Popular Romance Novels Authored by Librarians
RWA awarded funding to E.E. Lawrence to explore depictions of librarians in romance novels authored by librarians.
Dr. Jodi McAlister and Claire Parnel
#RomanceClass: Mapping the Genre World of English-Language Romance in the Philippines
RWA awarded funding to Dr. Jodi McAlister and Claire Parnel to conduct research on English-Language romance fiction in the Philippines through author interviews and other fieldwork.
Anna Michelson
Redefining the Romance: Classification and Social Change in Romance Genre Fiction
RWA awarded funding to Anna Michelson to conduct source and field research on classification and social change in romance fiction.
2018
Margo Hendricks, UC Santa Cruz
Heliodorus' Daughters: Women of Color and the Romance Industry
RWA awarded funding to Professor Emerita Margo Hendricks to carry out field research for her book project titled Heliodorus’ Daughters: Women of Color and the Romance Industry on the relationship between women of color and the romance genre.
2017
Dr. Kate Brown, Huntington University
Dukes, Dowers, Devises, and Demesnes: The Paradoxical Place of English Law in the Historical Romance
RWA awarded funding to Dr. Kate Brown's project, which explores how English common law and constitutionalism give fundamental structure and substance to the historical romance genre.
Dr. Ria Cheyne, University
The Disability and Romance Project
RWA awarded funding to Dr. Ria Cheyne's project, which seeks to advance the scholarly conversation about disability and romance and will also engage with romance readers, writers and other industry professionals to encourage new conversations about romance, disability and representation.
2016
Kelly Choyke, Ohio University
The Power of Poular Romance Culture: An Ethnography of Feminism, the Romance Genres, and Womanhood in North America
RWA awarded funding to Kelly Choyke's project, which explores how romance novels connect women across racial, economic, and cultural boundaries.
Joanna Gregson, Pacific Lutheran University, and Jennifer Lois, Western Washington University
Shifting Identities and Re-Imagined Careers: Romance Authors and the Self-Publishing Revolution
RWA awarded funding to Joanna Gregson and Jennifer Lois's project to support the transcription of interviews with authors, editors, and literary agents about their perceptions of and experiences with self-publishing.
2015
Jonathan Andrew Allan, Ph.D., Brandon University
The Optimism of Happily Ever After
RWA awarded funding to Jonathan Andrew Allan's project "The Optimism of Happily Ever After." His proposed research seeks to explore one of the most critically maligned aspects of romance, the happy ending, or, the emotionally satisfying ending, via Affect Theory.
Drs. Beth Driscoll, University of Melbourne, Lisa Fletcher, University of Tasmania, and Kim Wilkins, University of Queensland
The Genre World of Romance in 21st Century Australia
RWA awarded funding to Drs. Driscoll, Fletcher, and Wilkins' project "The Genre World of Romance in 21st Century Australia." The researchers plan to create detailed case studies of three authors at different stages in their careers. The case studies will include analysis of the creative processes for one particular book by each author using textual analysis of the books and in-depth interviews with each author. They will also include interviews with the other significant players involved in the creation of and publication of each book. This research will present romance writers and their books in a wider artistic and commercial context.
Jessica Taylor, Ph.D., University of Toronto
Professional Business Women: Romance Writers, Feminism and "Women's Work"
RWA awarded funding to Jessica Taylor for her project "Professional Business Women." Taylor researches how writers, who can choose to define their work any number of ways, sometimes pitting the creative and artistic against the professional and commercial, can negotiate interesting blends of the two. She studies how writers think and talk about what they do as work and its value and significance.
2014
Amanda Bidnall, Ph.D.
Domesticating the Mass-Market Romance Novel: A Prehistory
Amanda Bidnall was awarded the research grant for her project to identify the historical reasons behind the "persistence, expansion, or marginalization of particular conventions of popular romantic fiction in the first half of the 20th century." The research project aims to "identify literary conventions and narrative patterns circulating in romantic fiction in light of the fluctuating circumstances of romance writing, publishing, and reading" and "provide a historical explanation for the decline or persistence of particular conventions or treatments of romance as the genre solidified in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s."
2013
An Goris, Ph.D., University of Leuven
Is There an Author in this Genre?
An Goris was awarded the academic research grant to support her book project, "Is There an Author in this Genre?" This book will examine the complete works of five contemporary romance authors and explore how the romance novelist contributes "to the institutional and paratextual evolutions of the romance genre" and in this process "takes on the characteristics of the individual 'author' . . . more traditionally associated with high literature and art."
Dr. Jayashree Kamblé, La Guardia Community College
Making Meaning in Romance: an Epistemology of Popular Romance Fiction
RWA awarded partial funding to Jayashree Kamblé's "Making Meaning in Romance: an Epistemology of Popular Romance Fiction." Kamblé's work has the potential to advance and expand the study of the romance novel significantly by taking a cross-disciplinary approach and bringing "popular romance scholarship into dialogue with the broader field of cultural studies." This work promises an "interpretation of both canonical romance authors . . . as well as a powerful approach to the interpretation of any romance novel."
2012
Dr. Stacy Holden, Purdue University
Not Deserted After the Storm: Images of Arab Political Systems in Romance Novels
Holden's project will analyze the desert kingdom of the sheikh to provide insight into the political imagination of Americans. Her research will respond to the following question: How do authors of romance novels represent Middle Eastern polities in romance novels published since 9/11? Holden will pay attention to three factors: the political institutions characterizing these polities, the ways that political process plays itself out, and the relations of the ruling sheikh to the West. To answer these questions, she will not only analyze romance novels, but also interview authors and readers. Holden contends that the descriptions of fictional kingdoms in the Middle East provide a means for American readers to assuage their fears about this region.
2011
Dr. Heather Schell, George Washington University
Harlequins in Translation: the Turkish Experience of the American Romance Novel
Schell's project will examine the popularity of Harlequin romances in Turkey which, while a country with a secular government, is predominantly an Islamic culture. Schell will survey and interview Turkish women who read the romances in translation to learn how they receive and perceive these novels written by and for North American women. She intends to study this data and seek the answers to questions such as: “What accounts for the appeal of these books? Do relationship-dominated books challenge or reinforce international readers’ expectations of gender norms? Do they shape the readers’ beliefs about U.S. culture? Are these books seen as supporting or challenging Turkish cultural values?”
Drs. Joanna Gregson, Pacific Lutheran University, and Jennifer Lois, Western Washington University
Craft and Career: the Gendered Culture of Romance Writers
Employing an ethnographic methodology that involves field work, observation and interviews, Gregson and Lois are amassing data that they will then study to uncover the ways “writers construct romance, gender, and sexuality through their writing as well as how they experience their careers as women in ‘the most popular, least respected literary genre’ (Regis 2003: xi). This topic is one facet of their larger study, which Drs. Gregson and Lois position as the first social-scientific study of romance writers. “The primary objective of our research will be filling this gap in the scholarly literature by giving writers’ experiences the systematic, social-scientific attention they warrant.”
2010
Conseula Francis, College of Charleston
Uncommon Pleasures: Textual Pleasure and Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary African American Romance and Erotica
Francis looked at the historical romances of popular writer Beverly Jenkins, asking the question, how can you write about black female sexual agency in a time when black political agency was, most often, precarious or, more likely, non-existent? Is it possible to accurately portray and honor the liberation struggles of American blacks while at the same time keeping female pleasure and agency at the center of the narrative? She argued of Jenkins' novels, particularly the novels featuring the Le Veq men, that black female pleasure becomes both a means to and a mark of liberation. The black heroines' acceptance of pleasure, both material and sexual, in these novels is not shameful or dangerous or an impediment to the liberation of black people; their pleasure is the impetus to that liberation.
Pamela Regis, McDaniel College
The American Novel, 1742 to the Present
Regis's career-long project, which began with A Natural History of the Romance Novel, is to define, analyze, and write the history of the genre based on as synoptic a knowledge of the entire history of the novel as I can muster. She argues that American romance holds a place near the center of the genre’s concerns, and its history deserves a separate treatment. The project involved first identifying the novels of American authors that contain the eight elements of the romance novel laid out in her earlier book. From this will emerge the first identification of America’s national canon of romance. Analysis of these novels with an eye to identifying the essential components of an American romance, which is to say, those characteristics that the author’s nationality and its attendant culture imbue it with, will define our romance tradition.
2009
Catherine Roach, The University of Alabama
Book Lovers: Love, Desire, and Fantasy in Popular Culture Romance Narratives
Roach's new project is a general audience academic book investigating the significant role that romance fiction plays in contemporary popular culture and the currently changing nature of this romance narrative. The working title is Book Lovers: Love, Desire, and Fantasy in Popular Culture Romance Narratives. Overall, Roach seeks, in this book, to highlight genre romance fiction as a highly significant and influential case study that allows us to examine the wider cultural narrative of romance and changing gender and sexual norms throughout the culture, particularly for women. Her goal is to move away from the somewhat unproductive debate in academic romance scholarship over critique vs. defense of the genre, while also widening that scholarship beyond the standard feminist or literary approaches. She seeks to place romance fiction in the broader context of the romance narrative in popular culture and to adopt a cultural studies/gender studies perspective to ask questions about meaning, power, agency, and fantasy in how the romance narrative plays out in the publishing industry, in the individual reading and writing experience, and in the realm of popular culture in which the romance story holds such vast sway.
2008
Sarah S. G. Frantz, Fayetteville State University
"The Rare Tears of a Strong Man": Power Exchange and the Construction of Masculinity in Popular Romance Fiction
The cathartic tears that well up in the climactic scene of Joey Hill's erotic romance—a novel that explores in a richly layered narrative the themes of sexual power exchange and the construction of gender—represent the appeal and explain the success of the Alpha male of popular romance fiction. These tears, symbolizing both the dominance and the submission of masculine authority and emotions, embody the core of Frantz's analysis of popular romance fiction. With the help of grant support of the Romance Writers of America, she proposed to write and publish three academic articles that explore in greater depth the historical foundations and the narrative and ideological constructions of the meaning and emotional power of these "rare tears of a strong man" in popular romance fiction.
2007
Stephanie Harzewski, University of Pennsylvania
The New Novel of Manners: Chick Lit and Postfeminist Sexual Politics
Romance Writers of America would like to congratulate Dr. Stephanie Harzewski on the acceptance of her book, for publication. Harzewski was the recipient of RWA’s 2006-2007 Academic Research Grant for a proposal titled “The New Novel of Manners: Chick Lit and Postfeminist Sexual Politics.” Harzewski applied for RWA’s academic grant so that she could continue her work on this project. “The financial support of the RWA Research Grant allowed for a reduced teaching load that enabled me to revise and expand my dissertation into a book manuscript. I utilized the time also by interviewing more authors and publishing industry professionals about how chick lit can inform our understanding of the history of the romance and general fiction book markets.”
2006
University of Missouri-Columbia
Librarian’s Perception of Romance Readers & Romance Novels
The Romance Writers of America's (RWA) 2004 Statistical Report reports that only 14% of romance novels were obtained in libraries (p. 6). Public libraries pride themselves on being places where patrons can find entertainment as well as information, and where they can find stories of all kinds. The RWA statistic, however, suggests that public libraries are not effective purveyors of romance reading. To learn more about why readers are not using public libraries for romance fiction, they proposed a nationwide, mixed-methods study of libraries' provision of romance fiction and librarians' attitudes toward romance fiction and romance readers. This project has the potential to have a significant effect on public library services to romance readers nationwide. Results from this survey will raise librarian's awareness of intentional or perceived bias against romance readers. It will help librarians plan romance-friendly programs and activities, create communities of romance readers, and develop an understanding of a large group of readers who are not, by all accounts, receiving optimum library services at the current time.
Eric Selinger, DePaul University
Teach Me Tonight: The Art of Reading Romance Fiction, One Book at a Time
Selinger started a collaborative blog about romance fiction specifically from an academic perspective. Teach Me Tonight now features seven named contributors—Sarah S. G. Frantz, Linda Hilton, Gwendolyn D. Pough, Pamela Regis, Sandra Schwab, Laura Vivanco, and myself—and has received over 13,000 page visits. While at work on these ancillary projects, Selinger has continued to work on the essays proposed to the RWA. He proposed, and had accepted, a major review-essay on the last ten years of work in romance fiction criticism: a piece that will look at such books as Pamela Regis’s A Natural History of the Romance Novel, From Australia With Love, the history of Australian popular romance by Juliet Flesch, Lynn S. Neal’s Romancing God, a study of evangelical women and Christian / Inspirational romance, Empowerment versus Oppression: 21st Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. edited by Sally Goade, among others.
2005
Jayashree Kamblé, University of Minnesota
Love in the Time of Globalization: A Reassesment of Popular Romance
Kamblé's proposed that determining why readers prefer some categories of romance to others will contribute to understanding the appeal of the genre as a whole. Her dissertation will also examine the effect of the rapidly growing romance community—notably, book clubs, online chat groups, conferences, and global readership (with the non-Anglo/American romance reader as the primary object of analysis)—on the writing, marketing, and the reception of the genre. Kamblé's hypothesis is that romances operate in complex ways to assess not just romantic relationships but contemporaneous political, social, and economic concerns, and are currently influencing perceptions of the same on an unprecedented scale through their expanding readership.
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