While working late at night on my laptop in early December 2023 with my television set kept on—on mute—I caught a glimpse of the opening…
Comments closedCategory: Instigations
At the ripe old age of nineteen, I found myself falling for romance novels long after my friends had already journeyed from the whimsical lands…
Comments closedLike so many readers of romance and chick lit, we—Maria Butler, a PhD student at University College Cork, and Rosalind Haslett, a Senior Lecturer in…
Comments closedI came to the study of romance media largely by accident. I didn’t grow up reading or watching romances: those activities were for girls, or…
Comments closedHere’s what sparked my interest in popular romance: a tottering stack of books next to my mother’s bed. The paperbacks were her romance novels, what…
Comments closedIn July 2021, I travelled for a family holiday to the sleepy, largely rural Shetland Islands (population 22,990) in far northern Scotland. My chosen holiday…
Comments closedI started reading romance novels when I was twelve years old. These books were not my mom’s forbidden paperbacks, which had titles like Wild Rapture…
Comments closedIt’s the summer of 1969, and my father is singing a love song. I am five, living in the white, two-story Dean’s House at the…
Comments closed