Deadline Approaching NORTHEAST POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION, Virtual, October 9 to October 11, 2025 AREA: ROMANCE/POPULAR ROMANCE FICTION Deadline: Tuesday, July 31st by 5pm EST

 Contact email: Wendy Wagner wwagner@jwu.edu

 The Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will host its 2025 annual conference this fall as a virtual conference from Thursday, October 9th, to Saturday, October 11th, 2025.

This NEPCA Area is seeking paper proposals on the topic of Romance/Popular Romance Fiction for the annual conference.  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 interested in forming panels around some of the following topics:

· 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 and disabilty

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

· The Romance industry and social media marketing

SPECIAL TOPIC: JANE AUSTEN at 250

We are also soliciting proposals for a panel devoted to the 250th birthday of Jane Austen. We welcome proposals for any paper related to Jane Austen’s literary works and media adaptations of these works, as well as any books/media about Jane Austen. We welcome perspectives from different disciplinary perspectives as well.

For specific questions about the Austen panel, please contact Julie Taddeo  at taddeo@umd.edu

For general questions about the Romance/Popular Romance Fiction area of NEPCA, please contact Wendy Wagner at wwagner@jwu.edu.

NEPCA welcomes individual papers and complete panels. Papers are generally 15-20 minutes in length. NEPCA discourages (but does not forbid) verbatim reading of papers and strongly encourages creative delivery of papers. We also encourage works in progress, and informal presentations. The only restrictions on presentations are that proposals should be rooted in research. We do not automatically exclude original poetry, composed works of fiction, or musical/dance/storytelling performance, but such works must be connected to greater theoretical and research frameworks.  NEPCA generally avoids proposals whose intent is overtly commercial.  Proposals should appeal to a broad audience.

You can submit your proposal at this link, which will ask for information and a proposal abstract of approximately 250 words. Please visit the general call for papers at https://www.northeastpca.org/call-for-papers for more information on the proposal process.

This call will be open until July 31, 2025 5pm EST.