Call for Proposals

Not Your Mother’s Bodice Rippers: The Romance Genre in the 21st Century

Editor: Susan Fanetti

The enduring stereotype of the romance novel is the dramatic cover depicting the bare-chested, Fabio-modeled “hero” holding the swooning “heroine” draped over his arm, her wild hair flowing and her bountiful pale breasts swelling from her torn dress. Hence the term “bodice-ripper.”

Since the affective turn in the early 1990s, the humanities and social sciences have witnessed a profound and renewed interest in how feelings operate; their relationship to both the human, the nonhuman (or more than human), and other feelings. As researchers, teachers and artists, we often struggle with the place and status of emotions in creative processes, institutions, the workplace, classrooms, and in our own research. How do we feel about all of this?

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Modern Fiction Studies Special Issue ⁠— Ishiguro After the Nobel 

Guest Editors: Chris Holmes and Kelly M. Rich
Deadline for Submissions: 5 January 2020

The Washington Irving Society invites proposals for a panel connecting Washington Irving and his contemporaries to the theater. As a native New Yorker, Irving was a lifelong theater goer and even aspired to become a playwright while living abroad. His relationship with playwright John Howard Payne and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, in fact, developed during this time in England when he attempted to write for the theater. As we continue to celebrate the 200th anniversary of The Sketch Book (1819-1820), stage performances of stories from the collection, such as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” are welcomed, but we open the panel to stage productions of Irving and his other writing, too.