Life Is Elsewhere: The Economy of Food and Sex in Chinese Web Romance

Professor Jin Feng (Grinnell College) Session 9.3: Romancing Chinese Worlds Abstract: It is stated in the Confucian classic The Book of Rites: “Food and sex are the primary desires of human beings.” However, little can be taken for granted about what food and sex mean in any particular context. Anthropologist Jack Goody sees the cooking […]

On the Way to a Better Life: Countryside themed romance in recent Chinese Television

Huike Wen (Willamette University) Session 9.2: Romancing Chinese Worlds Abstract: Thousands of romantic stories are told in East Asian media landscape while few of them happen in a rural area. Romantic love seems only belong to the city folks, which probably because romantic love is highly embedded in metropolitan consuming culture and media audience’s imagination […]

Topography of Romantic Love: Journeys, the Fantasy of Love, and Identity Crisis

Dr Fang-Mei Lin (National Taiwan Normal University) Session 9.1: Romancing Chinese Worlds Abstract: Taiwanese author Wu Zhuo-Liu’s novel, Orphan of Asia, was written during the end of WWII and Japanese colonial rule. This celebrated novel, which depicts the hero Taiming’s unsuccessful pursuit of identity among three options: the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Taiwanese, has […]

Girls of Riyadh and Desperate in Dubai : Reading and writing romance in the Middle East

Dr Amy Burge (University of Birmingham) Session 8.4: Muslim and Middle Eastern Romances Abstract: The Middle East has long held a romantic fascination for the west, characterised by the popular sheikh romance. Yet, as myself and others have argued (Burge 2016; Jarmakani 2015; Teo 2012) in these novels Middle Eastern women are often depicted as […]

The Kitchen and Beyond: Romantic Chronotope of Pakistani Popular Fiction

Javaria Farooqui (University of Tasmania) Session 8.3: Muslim and Middle Eastern Romances Abstract: This paper aims to explore the popular romance reading culture of Pakistan which includes, but is not limited to, magazines designed specifically for female readers. It is [Farooqui’s] contention that the works of fiction, published in these magazines, focus on imbuing the […]

Reading and Writing Muslim Romance Online

Claire Parnell (University of Melbourne) Session 8.2: Muslim and Middle Eastern Romances Abstract: Participatory media production through online self – publishing platforms affects the publishing field in interesting and important ways. In particular, the call for diverse representation in genre fiction has been growing in online communities, such as Wattpad, for some time. Narratives that […]

Muslims reading romance: Bruneian considerations of “Halal” and romance novels

Dr Katrina Mohd Daud (Universiti Brunei Darussalam) Session 8.1: Muslim and Middle Eastern Romances Abstract: In 2017, Bruneian writer Aisha Malik self-published “Jewel: An attempt at a Halal Romance:, the first Anglophone romance of its kind by a Bruneian. The novella traces out a burgeoning relationship between the newly religious Prince Danial and the hal-American, […]

“Reader, I mirrored him”: the recasting of romance tropes in Jane Eyre fanfiction

Dr Lucy Sheerman Session 7.3: 19th century legacies Abstract: Representatives of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre have proliferated since its publication. Within three months a play had been staged and at least eight plays had bee performed by 1900. From 1910 onwards the story was also re-cast for film. Eight silent and fifteen feature film […]

Beloved Monstrosity: Romance and Romanticism in Frankenstein

Steven Gil (Queensland University of Technology) Session 7.2: 19th century legacies Abstract: Upon its bicentennial anniversary, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818) remains vests with significance. Most are aware of a simplified version of her narrative where a man ‘playing God’ creates new life only to be ultimately destroyed by his work. However, […]

House, Home & Husband in historical romance fiction

Dr Sarah Ficke (Marymount University) Session 7.1: 19th century legacies Abstract: Home. For Elizabeth Bennet, as for many real middle- and upper-class women during the Regency and Victorian periods, “home” was a concept fraught with anxiety. Legal restrictions on women’s right to own property, entailed estates, and limited economic opportunities meant that marriage was the […]