NORTHEAST POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION, Hybrid, October 12 to October 14, 2023
AREA: ROMANCE/POPULAR ROMANCE FICTION
Deadline: August 1, 2023

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (NEPCA) is seeking paper proposals on the topic of Romance/Popular Romance Fiction for its annual conference. 

NEPCA’s 2023 fall conference will be held Thursday October 12 – Saturday October 14, 2023. Virtual sessions will take place on Thursday evening and Friday mornings via Zoom, and in-person sessions will take place on Friday evening and Saturday morning at Nichols College, in Dudley, MA. The deadline for proposals is August 1, 2023.  

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:

• Queen Charlotte (the Bridgerton prequel) – Is it a romance? Does the series address the criticisms of race and colonialism in Seasons 1 and 2 of Bridgerton? How well does the show adapt the characters from the original book series?
• 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

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.

For more information about the conference, please visit https://nepca.blog/conference/. 

Abstracts should be submitted by August 1, 2023 through this form.

Visit the Facebook page for NEPCA at https://www.facebook.com/nepca01

If you have questions about this area, please reach out to the Area Chair for the Romance/Popular Romance Fiction area, Wendy Wagner, Johnson & Wales University, at wwagner@jwu.edu.