A word from conference organizers:
Several resources have been especially helpful to us as we have prepared for this conference. These are works we have thought with, listened to, and, in some cases, created ourselves. Many are free or available as open-access resources. Check out the selections below!
- “Lorde, Have Mercy” - Season 1, Episode 3 of the Name It! Your Encyclopodia of Big Ideas podcast by Yale PhD candidates Iman AbdoulKarim and Kohar Avakian
- Bonus: Read Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”
- The Black Romance podcast by Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman and the incredible oral histories she’s recorded, with Beverly Jenkins, Brenda Jackson, Vivian Stephens, Adriana Herrera, Sandra Kitt, Rebekah Weatherspoon, and more…
- You can listen to these interviews on Julie’s podcast or read some of the transcripts in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies May 2022 special issue on Black Romance, co-edited by Dr. Moody-Freeman and Dr. Margo Hendricks
- Fated Mates podcast, particularly the Trailblazer episodes.
- Margo Hendricks. Race and Romance: Coloring the Past. ACMRS Press, 2022. Open access version available.
- Rebecca Romney. The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in Rare Books, 1769-1999. PDF open access available.
- Book collecting prizes:
- David Ruggles Prize: https://rugglesprize.org/
- Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize: https://www.honeyandwaxbooks.com/prize.php
- Popular romance archives:
- Bowling Green State University Ray & Pat Browne Popular Culture Library’s Romance Collections (accepts certain donations – see Donations page): https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl/romance.html
- Harvard Radcliffe Institute Schlesinger Library’s Romance Fiction Collection (note from Schlesinger curators: if you are interested in reaching out to the library to see whether your collections might be a good match for the Schlesinger, email curators@radcliffe.harvard.edu): https://guides.library.harvard.edu/romanceandcourtship/romancefiction
- Rita B. Dandridge. Black Women’s Activism: Reading African American Women’s Historical Romances. Peter Lang, Inc., 2004.
- Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters edited by Jessica P. Pryde. Berkley, 2022.
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted. 1892. Available as free ebook and audiobook via Project Gutenberg and LibriVox.
- Julie Moody-Freeman. “African American romance.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction, edited by Jayashree Kamblé, Eric Murphy Selinger, and Hsu-Ming Teo. 229-251. Routledge, 2021.
- Eric Murphy Selinger and Laura Vivanco. “Romance and/as religion.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction, edited by Jayashree Kamblé, Eric Murphy Selinger, and Hsu-Ming Teo. 485-510. Routledge, 2021.