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Issue 1.2 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) is now available. JPRS is a peer-reviewed academic journal which is freely accessible online. Eric Selinger, the editor of the journal, writes that

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is dedicated to publishing scholarship on romantic love in global popular media, now and in the past, along with interviews, pedagogical discussions, and other material of use to both scholars and teachers. With this second issue, we make good on that mission in several new and exciting ways. We expand internationally, and into cyberspace, with essays on web-based Chinese romantic fiction, on single women in British middlebrow novels of the interwar years, and on debates at the popular Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website about “plus-size” heroines in popular romance fiction.

Alongside these, we have our second author interview, this time with groundbreaking science fiction author Joanna Russ, reflecting on her decades-old engagement with slash fiction and fandom. And this issue inaugurates what we hope will be an on-going series of “Pedagogy Reports,” this one focused on the challenges and rewards of “embedding” Georgette Heyer’s romance novel Sylvester in a University of Tasmania course on historical fiction, teaching it alongside canonical literary texts.

Here’s a table of contents for issue 1.2:

• Editor’s Note: Issue 1.2
• “Does This Book Make Me Look Fat?” by Sonya C. Brown
• “Men Conquer the World and Women Save Mankind: Rewriting Patriarchal Traditions through Web-based Matriarchal Romances” by Jin Feng
• “These are Just Romances: Love and the Single Woman in the Fiction of Rosamond Lehmann” by Emma Sterry
• Pedagogy Report: Embedding Popular Romance Studies in Undergraduate English Units: Teaching Georgette Heyer’s Sylvester by Lisa Fletcher, Rosemary Gaby, and Jennifer Kloester
• Interview: Joanna Russ, by Conseula Francis and Alison Piepmeier

JPRS welcomes “comments on all of these contributions.”

Teach Me Tonight

See the post at www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com What are the criteria for considering the top all-time American writers?

AttackingtheDemi-Puppets

A recent episode of This American Life includes the account of David MacLean, who loses his memory in India. It’s a terrific story for many reasons, and want to pick up on a detail that comes up along the way.

Having regained some of his memories and visited his family in Ohio, MacLean returns to his apartment in India.

I was alone, and lonelier than I thought I could be in a room filled with things that I had selected. There were books. I opened them and found my handwriting in the margins. Still nothing. I had read these books. And now I had to read them again. But why bother? If I lost my memory again, all that work would be futile.

I have a related feeling about undergraduate teaching, at the level of the class rather than of the individual. With greater and lesser degrees of tinkering, I use most of my syllabi at least twice, sometimes more. The first group of students and I spend a semester reading together, developing a slow-developing conversation in which we compile a set of shared readings of passages, understandings of how each person in the room reacts to texts, and so forth: a collective version of MacLean’s marginalia, some of it recorded (in papers, message board conversations, and so forth), most of it not.

The next group of students, however, inherits none of that classroom culture, and to me, starting the new class feels like forgetting. I appreciate the pleasures of discoveries that feel new; for example, I love watching class after class find their own ways of talking about the narration of Wuthering Heights as a function of Lockwood’s relationship to Ellen Dean. But must we forget everything a class has learned when the semester break comes? I wonder whether our courses can, like Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” recognize the wonder of “first looking” while also prizing the community implied by appreciating what has come before.

Our current practices enforce forgetting. Grinnell, for instance, is a Blackboard school; as far as I know, that software has no way to pass message board discussions from one group of students to another. Even if it could, institutional protections of student privacy would raise serious barriers to such sharing.

What, then, do I need to cultivate a new approach that allows both for new insight and for inherited classroom culture, that allows for the celebration of primary and secondary discovery?

My main answer is this: to be the teacher I want to be, I need to become a better computer programmer. I need to be able to create environments where students can record their learning, share it, build on it, structure it so that it welcomes and grows from the participation of their successors. I also need to work with institutional authorities to make good-faith sharing of academic thoughts easy for students and professors.

My first, modest effort to create this effect involved The Transatlantic 1790s, a database-backed site created by a small group of students and me (they writing content, I writing code) in 2004. The following year, a seminar read some of those students’ work and contributed to the site’s bibliography as part of the work the class. That all went well enough to make me want to do more: with more skill and experience, I could routinely bring together the learning of students in multiple classes, and then the learning of others, to inspire the cultural evolution that stems from inherited thoughts.

What happens when a group of students can recall the work of previous students they may not have met? I look forward to finding out.

Teaching Romanticism: An RC Pedagogies Blog

The winners of the First Pop Lit Story Opening Contest are: 1.) Anthony Jones for “The Diadem.” 2.) “XXXXXXXX” (Pablo D’Stair) for “Glas.” 3.) Tom Hendricks for “3.” Other writers received votes. Others who entered could’ve or should’ve! Next Up: Another literary game of sorts which will require your participation.

AttackingtheDemi-Puppets

Try It Before You Buy It features free and legal mp3 downloads and full album streams from the week’s music releases:

Alcoholic Faith Mission: And The Running With Insanity EP
full album stream
Alcoholic Faith Mission: “Running Away with Insanity” [mp3]

Becoming the Archetype: Celestial Completion
full album stream

Britney Spears: Femme Fatale
full album stream

Broken Bells: Meyrin Fields
full album stream

Dirty Beaches: Badlands
full album stream

Emery: We Do What We Want
full album stream

Erland and the Carnival: Nightingale
Erland and the Carnival: “Nightingale” [mp3]

Five Eight: Your God Is Dead to Me Now
Five Eight: “Your God Is Dead to Me Now” [mp3]

Funeral Party: The Golden Age Of Knowhere
full album stream

Generationals: Actor-Caster
full album stream

Heidi Spencer: Under Streetlight Glow
full album stream

Hunx and his Punx: Too Young To Be In Love
Hunx and his Punx: “Too Young to Be in Love” [mp3]
Hunx and his Punx: “Lovers Lane” [mp3]

Los Lonely Boys: Rockpango
full album stream

Matt Duke: One Day Die
full album stream

Mountain Goats: All Eternals Deck
full album stream

My Cousin, The Emperor: The Subway EPs
My Cousin, The Emperor: “Nothing Left for Us to Find” [mp3]

Obits: Moody, Standard and Poor
Obits: “You Gotta Lose” [mp3]
Obits: “Shift Operator” [mp3]

Pearl Jam: Vs. Expanded Edition (remastered with 3 bonus tracks)
full album stream

Pearl Jam: Vitalogy Expanded Edition (remastered with 3 bonus tracks)
full album stream

Pete Yorn: musicforthemorningafter 10th Anniversary Edition
full album stream

Peter Bjorn and John: Gimme Some
full album stream

Radiohead: The King Of Limbs
full album stream

Royal Bangs: Flux Outside
full album stream
Royal Bangs: “Grass Helmet” [mp3]

Secret Cities: Strange Hearts
Secret Cities: “Love Crime” [mp3]

The Sounds: Something To Die For
full album stream

Southeast Engine: Canary
full album stream

Tallulah Rendall: Alive
full album stream

Various Artists: Sin-Atra
full album stream

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis: Here We Go Again
full album stream

Zoobombs: La Vie En Jupon
Zoobombs: “Highway a Go Go” [mp3]

also at Largehearted Boy:

this week’s complete list of interesting music releases
Try It Before You Buy It lists

2010 Year-End Online Music Lists
weekly CD & DVD release lists
daily free and legal mp3 downloads

Largehearted Boy

Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures

News of this conference and call for papers has just come in from Pamela Regis. Pam is the author of A Popular History of the Romance Novel and is organising the conference:

McDaniel College

is proud to sponsor

Popular Romance in the New Millennium

An International Conference

November 10-11, 2011
Westminster, Maryland*

Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2011

The popular romance has come of age.

Almost four decades ago, with the publication of The Flame and the Flower, the boom in North American romance publication began. Three decades ago major critical work on the popular romance began to appear.

Popular Romance in the New Millennium will gather presenters who can put the romance in fresh perspective, who can point us toward the future of romance and romance criticism, and who can help us understand the place of the popular romance in the 21st century.

Presentations are requested on print, e-published, film, web, and other popular romance—YA or adult—from any culture, and from any period. Critics from across the theoretical spectrum, as well as authors, bloggers, editors, and booksellers are invited.

Presentation topics include but are not limited to: Single-author studies; papers on emerging authors, filmmakers, or other romance creators; on emerging sub-genres; and offering new perspectives on older works. Presenters on romance readers and romance reading, blogs and blogging, online romance culture, and writing romance in the digital age are welcome.

In view of the increasing number of college courses focusing on or including this genre, presentations are encouraged on teaching the popular romance.

Individual papers, panels, interactive presentations, and interviews are welcome.

Proposal guidelines: By June 1, 2011, submit as an email attachment to pregis (at) mcdaniel (dot) edu:

An abstract (100 words)
A bio (no longer than 100 words)
A/V needs

*Complementary hotel accommodation for presenters and free transportation to Westminster for all conferees from the BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport and the BWI Thurgood Marshall Amtrak station will be provided. McDaniel College’s 160-acre campus overlooks Westminster, a walkable town with a population of about 18,000.

Teach Me Tonight

Literary culture has exploded into popular culture in the past twenty years, and Jim Collins’ book Bring on the Books for Everybody both examines its rise as well as the implications this has on literature itself. Reading has become a social activity with increasing numbers of book clubs, literary film adaptations, and even television celebrities like Oprah Winfrey recommending books to the masses. Impressively, Collins is both exhaustive in his research and evenhanded in his observations of the phenomena and its effect on literature.

As a fan of both popular culture and literature, I found Bring on the Books for Everybody as entertaining as it was enlightening.

My next book is Gabrielle Hamilton’ memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef.

also at Largehearted Boy:

other 52 Books, 52 Weeks reviews

Online “Best Books of 2010″ lists
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)

Largehearted Boy

A wrap-up of features you may have missed this past week at Largehearted Boy:

52 Books, 52 Weeks Book Reviews

Jim Collins’ book Bring on the Books for Everybody

Book Notes (authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their book):

Camilla Gibb for her novel The Beauty of Humanity Movement
Jewly Hight for her book Right by Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs
Kris Saknussemm for his novel Enigmatic Pilot: A Tall Tale Too True

Weekly new book recommendations:

Atomic Books Comics Preview (recommended new comics and graphic novels)
Largehearted Word (recommended new books)

Music recommendations:

Try It Before You Buy It (full album streams and mp3s from this week’s music releases)
The Week’s Interesting Music Releases

DVD recommendations:

This Week’s Interesting DVD Releases

And of course, the daily posts:

Daily Downloads (10 free and legal mp3 downloads every day, plus links to free live recordings online)
Shorties (news & links from the worlds of music, books, and pop culture)

also at Largehearted Boy:

52 Books, 52 Weeks
Antiheroines
Atomic Books Comics Preview
Book Notes
Book Reviews
Contests / Giveaways
Daily Downloads
Largehearted Word
Lists
music & DVD release lists
Music Festival Downloads
musician/author Interviews
Note Books
Soundtracked
Try It Before You Buy It
Why Obama

Largehearted Boy

Spinner interviews singer-songwriter Owen Pallett.

Why have ‘Heartland’ focus on the interplay between creator and the art they create?

As a songwriter I’m interested in examining how people talk about other songwriters. Let’s say Sufjan Stevens, the way people talk about him and make assumptions about his music — because he’s not a homosexual but he sounds like a homosexual, and he is a Christian but his music doesn’t sound Christian. It got me interested in the difference between what the art is and who the artist is that’s making it. So that’s been occupying my brain.

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Jerome Charyn talks to Weekend Edition about his new book, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil.

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The Wall Street Journal profiles Bob Clearmountain, who mixed classic albums for the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and many others.

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Washington City Paper profiles Michael Kentoff of the Caribbean.

Chad Clark, the Beauty Pill leader who mixes The Caribbean’s records, sums up Kentoff’s lyrical style well, but even he’s at something of a loss. “When someone describes a songwriter as literate, they tend to be implying that that person is coming from a certain kind of tradition—the Dylan-esque writer or the Leonard Cohen-eqsue writer or the Joni Mitchell-esque writer. And to me, the Caribbean’s songs don’t draw from those traditions at all. There’s this really powerful blend of the deeply surreal and dreamlike world and the supremely ordinary, almost actuarial kind of world. I don’t know where that comes from; that’s a mystery to me. I don’t know where Michael’s characters come from.”

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The Atlantic profiles the free streaming music website Stereomood.

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The Globe and Mail explores Japan’s apocalyptic literature.

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Gibson interviews Rhett Miller of the Old 97′s.

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At Knopf, Chip Kidd discusses his cover for the new Haruki Murakami novel, 1Q84.

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Singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith visits The Current studio for an interview and live performance.

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Oprah.com’s Book Finder lists 20 books of poetry everyone should own.

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Songwriters on Process interviews Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak.

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3:AM Magazine interviews legendary comics writer Alan Moore.

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Mother Jones interviews John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats about reproductive rights, feminism, and his new album.

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David Bezmozgis talks to the National Post about his new novel, The Free World.

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Follow me on Twitter and Stumbleupon for links (updated throughout the day) that don’t make the daily “Shorties” columns.

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous Shorties posts (daily links from the worlds of music, literature, and pop culture)

Atomic Books Comics Preview (highlights of the week’s comics & graphic novel releases)
daily mp3 downloads
Largehearted Word (highlights of the week’s book releases)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week’s CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

Largehearted Boy