syn·aes·the·sia – a subjective sensation that occurs in one sense modality when another modality is stimulated…. syn·aes·thet'ic – involving more than one sense
Johanna Hoorenman (Utrecht University) Session 11.3: Subversions of Race, Culture and History Abstract: Native American themed romance has long been one of the most popular subgenres of popular romance. For a number of years, the Romantic Times had specific Reviewer’s Choice Awards for “Best Indian Romance,” “Best Historical Indian Romance,” and “Best Indian Romance by […]
Eric Murphy Selinger (DePaul University) Session 11.1: Subversions of Race, Culture and History Abstract: Chinese-American novelist Sherry Thomas sets two acclaimed books in the Silk Road regions of Central Asia: Not Quite a Husband (2009; RITA 2010), set in the Swat Valley during the 1897 Pathan Revolt; and My Beautiful Enemy, set partly in Chinese […]
Kat Mayo (Bookthingo) and Mina V. Esguerra (#romanceclass) Session 10.2: South / South-East Asian Romance Communities Abstract: Author Mina V. Esguerra has single-handedly defined the English-language romance genre in the Philippines through the #romanceclass initiative, which has helped over 100 Filipino authors publish over 200 new titles. This interview will explore the evolution of #romanceclass […]
Meghna Bohidar (University of Delhi) Session 10.1: South / South-East Asian Romance Communities This paper highlights some particularities of the romance culture produced in India by popular Hindi cinema from the 1990s to the contemporary. The 1990s saw distinctive shift from previous eras of cinema by focusing on escapist, family-oriented romance, aided by the rise […]
Dr Erin S.Young (SUNY Empire State College) Session 9.4: Romancing Chinese Worlds Abstract: This project will explore romantic relationships in the short fiction of Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far), with a particular focus on her 1912 collection of stories, Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Since the critical rediscovery of Eaton’s writings in the 1970s, her work […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
