The Popular Romance Project: Exploring the Romance Novel from Multiple Perspectives Across Time and Culture

FAIN: TD-50256-10

Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc. (Melrose, MA 02176-3933)
Laurie Kahn (Project Director: January 2010 to April 2014)

Final planning and scripting for a film, a symposium, and reading and discussion programs on how romance literature reflects universal themes of courtship, love, and intimacy.

Though popular romance fiction readily adapts to new technologies and cultural concerns that vary over time, the impulse to tell stories about love is universal and timeless. With a variety of complementary, carefully integrated programs -- a documentary film for national television broadcast, an academic symposium, and a nationwide series of library discussion groups -- the Popular Romance Project will stir thoughtful reflection and widespread conversations about the popular portrayal of romance, examining the creation and consumption of popular romance novels and other forms of popular romance. Informed by the best scholarship in cultural history, literature studies, folklore, popular culture studies, anthropology, and new media, the project's partners will engage their overlapping audiences to promote critical dialogue as well as an accessible and engaging examination of the many roles romance novels play in our culture.