Welcome to the Romance community! We’re so happy you’re here and we want you take full advantage of the opportunities our new platform provides. Please read over the code of conduct so we can continue to ensure a safe and supportive space for all. Thank you for your dedication to the Popular Culture Association!

Call for Papers

The Romance Area of the National Popular Culture Association is soliciting abstracts for the next annual conference, to held April 8-11, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia.

CFP: Reading the Romance Reader

Upload your 250-word proposal to pcaaca.org by November 30, 2025

What does it mean to be a romance reader (or viewer, or listener, or any other type of consumer)? Forty years ago, “creators” and “audience” were understood as binary opposites, reader response theory felt like a cutting-edge approach to genre fiction, and the idea of “participatory culture” wasn’t even a gleam in Henry Jenkins’ eye. Since that time, both Romancelandia and the scholarly tools for understanding and navigating it have blossomed. Romance readers have more opportunities to communicate their preferences to authors, publishers, and other readers, giving them more influence over the genre. Multiple modalities mean that romance enthusiasts can access new narratives more immediately, in more locations, in more formats, and, if they choose, with less visibility. At the same time, the romance genre is enjoying a moment of public pride, and romance readers are visible—to the public, to each other, online, in real life, to publishers and to bookstores—in an unprecedented way.

We believe that romance scholarship has also entered a golden age (thank you, JPRS!), with scholars from different disciplines and different countries bringing fresh ideas, exploring new or overlooked texts and modalities, and introducing field-specific analytical tools that offer a richer understanding of people’s engagement with popular romance. We therefore think it’s past time to turn our collective attention to the consumers of popular romance. For our 2026 conference, we invite you to reread the romance reader (or viewer, listener, LARPer, etc.). Showcase your favorite romance community, show off your data, teach us how to use your methods, offer a case study of public engagement with romance, theorize the affordances of reading vs listening vs viewing the romance, or take a deep dive into the historical changes in what it means to be part of the audience for popular romance.

Possible topics

+ Romance reading and identity
+ Modes of reading: how are people consuming romantic media?
+ The rise of audio consumption
+ Reader or influencer: the role of paid labor
+ Bookish spaces: navigating the romance convention
+ Developments in romance marketing in the age of the empowered reader
+ The romance author and public readings
+ The media romance reader: have media representations of romance readers changed?
+ Borrowing, buying, and browsing romance titles
+ Reviewing the romance: the perceived authority of reader reviews vs. critic reviews
+ Defending or dissing romance authors in online communities
+ The influence of romance readers on the publishing industry
+ How do new romance readers become part of Romancelandia?
+ Rating, tagging, and crowd-sourced cataloguing
+ Love Yours(h)elf: bookshelf pics and performativity
+ Romance reader or romance fan: what’s the difference?
+ Was romance reading ever “passive”? What counts as an “active” romance reader? Are these categories useful?
+ What romance readers talk about when they talk about their books
+ Romance readers as characters in romance novels
+ Do romance bookstores foster community among romance readers?
+ Early birds and the NetGalley ARC
+ Romance fanfic and fan art.

If you would rather explore some other aspect of popular romance right now, you are very
welcome to ignore our theme and submit a proposal on something else. We also want to
emphasize that although we have used the language of ‘reader’, musings on all types of
romance consumption are welcome.

Who we are

The Romance Area of the PCA is deeply interested in popular romance both within and outside of mainstream popular culture, now or in the past, anywhere in the world. Scholars, romance writers, romance readers/viewers, romance industry professionals, librarians, and any combination of these are welcome. You do not need to be an academic or have an institutional affiliation to be part of the Romance area.

The Romance area invites any theoretical or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to romance. Past presenters have drawn on methods from literary studies, history, library sciences, sociology, film studies, and creative writing, to name the most common approaches—we’ve even had a presentation with puppets (you know who you are). We’ve loved all of these.

Finally, we are not interested solely in novels! The Romance area is open to engagements with all forms of media and culture that are concerned with romance, including, but not limited to, the following: art; literature; philosophy; radio and audio media; film and television; comics and graphic novels; videos, webzines and other online storytelling; and apps, including dating apps.  

Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

If you have any questions at all, please contact the area chairs:

Dr. Heather Schell
George Washington University
Washington, DC
schellhm@gwu.edu

Dr. Jodi McAlister
Deakin University
Melbourne, Australia
jodi.mcalister@deakin.edu.au

Important Dates to Remember:

• Database opens for Submissions - Sept. 1, 2025
• Early Bird Registration Begins - Sept. 1, 2025
• Deadline for Paper Proposals - Nov. 30, 2025
• Travel Grant Applications Due - Dec. 15, 2025
• Early Bird Registration Ends for Presenters - Dec. 31, 2025
• Regular Registration Begins for Presenters - Jan. 1, 2026 
• Travel Grant Decisions / Notifications - Jan. 31, 2026
• Regular Registration Ends for Presenters - Jan. 31, 2026
• Late Registration Starts for Presenters - Feb. 1, 2026
• Preliminary Program draft available - Feb. 6, 2026

Those Presenters Not Registered by Feb. 15 Will be Dropped from the Program

CONFERENCE IN ATLANTA, GA - April 8-11, 2026