@scribblingsandy.bsky.social Saw some special Roman armour and thought you might be interested 🐊 www.youtube.com/shorts/CpnK1...

This Roman armour remembers being a crocodile

YouTube video by The British Museum

youtube.com

Couldn't find the study this is based on (think it may not have been published yet) but noted that the author felt compelled to mention that he himself doesn't read romance. Fiction was split into just three clusters, but I think this doesn't account for romantic suspense, sci fi romance, romantasy

What your summer reading list says about you

Just picked your holiday book? Our choices can subconsciously reveal important parts of our personality, studies show.

bbc.co.uk

Wish this was being filmed and made more widely available!

Dr Amy Burge@dramyburge.bsky.social · 5d ago

Thrilled to be back at the #RNAConf26 and to be talking more about the incredible scholarship out there on romantic fiction! I always learn so much at RNA events, and meet the NICEST people 💕

There doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap between French and English-language scholarship on romance. I've just come across a new-to-me term "New Romance" which they've been discussing for several years! And I'd never heard of it before 😭.

Wrote about the expansion of socio-political representation in @taliahibbert.bsky.social novels A Girl Like Her and Take a Hint, Dani Brown urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

I'm so glad to share the CFP for the Eleventh conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. Link to the full CFP  www.iaspr.org/conferences/... Please share with your cool academic circles! #popularromancestudies #romance #CFP #AcademicSky @iaspr.bsky.social

Very exciting - just spotted an article I missed, published in 2024, Cailey Hall's “Redefining the Archive in Queer Historical Romance Novels” in Unsettling Sexuality: Eighteenth-Century Queer Horizons, eds. Jeremy Chow and Shelby Johnson (University of Delaware Press, 2024)

I'm sure I keep seeing "pretentious" (and pompous) used weirdly all over the place recently. "a child, with a shock of curly white-blond hair, a pretentious smile" What's that supposed to mean? This is a mother writing a fairy-tale about her own child! www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/p...

Definition of PRETENTIOUS

characterized by pretension: such as; having or showing a noticeably excessive appreciation of one's own merits; expressive of false, unjustified, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature… See the...

merriam-webster.com

Feel like this could be an illustration for "Standing on the shoulders of giants" (if one were writing a book about rodent scientists).

Biodiversity Pics@biodiversitypix.bsky.social · 3w ago

🐭 Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur /. Erlangen: Expedition des Schreber'schen säugthier- und des Esper'schen Schmetterlingswerkes [etc., 1774]-1846.. [Source]

What does it take to stay relevant in romance for nearly five decades? In Episode 175, Jayne Ann Krentz talks about the risks and reinventions that shaped her career, why the alpha hero never disappeared, how romance changes with culture, and why popular fiction matters in unstable times.

I've posted recently about some of these individually, but here's my latest list of new items of scholarship about popular romance novels. Lots of dissertations/theses and the articles from the new issue of JPRS which weren't online first:

Ficke, Sarah (2026). "Narrating Histories of Love and Violence: The Civil War and Alyssa Cole’s A Hope Divided." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 15.1.

Lasya Tandon on Georgette Heyer's novels: "some see sexuality as a complex contradiction in her historical romances, some find its subversive presence between the lines, and others argue that to expand upon it would destroy the storyline—all of them are quite right."

Comparing cookbooks and romance novels and finding value in both. From Anne L. Bower, "Romanced by Cookbooks." Gastronomica 1 May 2004; 4 (2): 35–42. doi: doi.org/10.1525/gfc....

New in @jprstudies.bsky.social : Kvistad, Erika (2026). "Happily Ever After?/Happily Ever After! Negotiating the Gothic in Contemporary Dark Romance." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 15.1. Interesting examination of how the happy ending of romance can intensify a feeling of gothic horror.

New dissertation on monster romance: "The monster is not a random erotic object, but a figure through which the genre makes dissatisfaction with ordinary masculinity narratively and emotionally legible. (47)"

New Issue Alert: Very pleased to share the latest issue of JPRS!📢 With articles on trauma in popular romance by Alicia Leigh, cuteness in Thai boys-love novels by Bancha Rattanamathuwong, notes on defining the 'trope' in romance fiction, and many others🎉 www.jprstudies.org/issue-15-1/

Hey all! Guess who's doing a talk on the history of sapphic romance this weekend!? ME! Come and join me at 10am or 7pm BST on Saturday 10 - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fated-love... 7 - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fated-love...

Fated lovers, burning houses and unruly hens: A sapphic history of romance

Dr Sam Hirst introduces a history of sapphic romance with closer studies of work by Tasha Suri, Olivia Waite and more!

eventbrite.co.uk

NEW: Guhr, Svenja (2026). "Between Whispers and Screams: Loudness Standard Deviation as a Proxy for Explicit Content Detection in US Romance Novels." Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for the Digital Humanities: 368–380. aclanthology.org/2026.nlp4dh-...

I know what I'm going to be doing today! Reading a new PhD thesis, by @jm930.bsky.social ! Moore, J. R. V. (2026). Literature of hope: Reading romance in the religious lives of black women.

Doesn't have alt text, so: a cartoon by Coen. The magic mirror, mirror on the wall is saying to the Wicked Queen (who has had lip fillers put in, to make her fairer and who's sitting in front of her laptop, consulting ChatGPT): "You do know it's just telling you what it thinks you want to hear..."

Private Eye Magazine@privateeyenews.bsky.social · last mo.

“You do know it’s just telling you what it thinks you want to hear…” From the latest Private Eye, out now.

If anyone's interested in seeing my latest 3D #HandEmbroidery creation, it's here:

My Labour MP has replied that she does "not think rejection of the EHRC code would be helpful, and indeed would result in further uncertainty and confusion for trans people". Quite a few MPs disagree edm.parliament.uk/early-day-mo... and Toby Buckle www.liberalcurrents.com/starmer-out/ argues

Congratulations to Markéta! [The thesis, about "English Folkloric Liminality in Queer Paranormal Historical Popular Romance", can be downloaded from the link below!]

Markéta Šmídová@smidovamm.bsky.social · last mo.

PhDone.

Romance writers wanted! Please share your thoughts on AI for a research project being conducted by Bridget Kies of Oakland University. Soliciting published and unpublished authors for interviews. More info: bridgetkies.com/romance-and-... #romance #romancelandia #romanceauthors

@stegan.bsky.social , you're referred to as "Steve Ammidown, a renowned archivist" in an Honors project on romance cover art by a student at Bowling Green State University

New PhD thesis: Šmídová, Monika Markéta. Kissing for Dear Life in a Dead Land: English Folkloric Liminality in Queer Paranormal Historical Popular Romance.

Paging @nushpowell.bsky.social : “It has of late been much the fashion with writers of celebrity to choose pirates for their heroes, insomuch that many of our youth, especially of the female sex, attach an idea of romantic grandeur to the very word pirate.” (Kaleidoscope, 1830)

Romance novels can be an important part of the historical record. From an article by Paige Reynolds, on teaching romance fiction as part of Irish literature (pages 42-43 of the latest College of the Holy Cross magazine: crossworks.holycross.edu/cgi/viewcont... )