Romancing the Archive: Romance Fiction in Historical and Cultural Context

Harvard FAS

Are romance novels regressive texts or subtle forms of cultural resistance? Does this wildly popular, widely dismissed, highly gendered fiction genre stand for or against the well-being of its primary authors and readers – women? Romancing the Archive explores 20th and 21st century romance fiction as cultural commentary produced in historical context. We will contend with whether romance fiction holds a tension at heart – the push and pull between resistance to tradition and resistance…