Last panel today at #IASPR18: the keynote, feat. the @PopFicDoctors (@lmfletcher72, @Beth_driscoll, @KimberleyTweets)! 
Fletcher: studies of romance often begin from a defensive crouch, defending the genre's ideological and literary merits. #IASPR18
Fletcher: romance has more in common with other popular genres that has hitherto been emphasised in scholarship. #IASPR18
Driscoll: the genre worlds project seeks to chart a route beyond the decisionist approach, which typically involves evaluating a text/genre's ideological merits. #IASPR18
Wilkins: the fundamental premise of the research is that each genre can be conceived as a world with three layers: a sector of the publishing industry, a social formation, and a body of texts. #IASPR18
Wilkins: "track the data, talk to the people, read the books" has been the project mantra. #IASPR18
Fletcher: the genre world is an adaptation of Howard S Becker's "art world", which focuses on the networks around art rather than a specific gifted individual. #IASPR18
A genre world is... #IASPR18
Driscoll: the genre world of 21st century Australian romance is both national and international. It is highly professionalised, and built on a dynamic real-and-imagined sociality. #IASPR18
Wilkins: popular fiction is growing in Australia (especially in romance), rather than literary fiction publishing being in decline. #IASPR18
The growth of genres in Australia in the 21st century (romance going from 200ish to over 900). #IASPR18
Fletcher: questions of Australian national identity are not the organising question for work by Australian romance authors (despite growth in local genres like ru-ro). #IASPR18
Fletcher: there is no equivalent in crime or fantasy to Harlequin in romance. #IASPR18
Driscoll: Australia is passionately in love with the C-format. #IASPR18
Driscoll: the artwork is not just the work, but the process through which it is made and remade whenever someone appreciates it. #IASPR18
Fletcher: knowledge about craft and publishing is transmitted between members of the genre world, as they gain "genre competence". #IASPR18
Driscoll: a lifetime of reading romances is the most common way to gain romance genre competence. It can also be acquired/enhanced through structured learning (writing courses, groups, crit partners, formal programs). #IASPR18
Wilkins: genre worlds distinguish between central and peripheral participants. Many of the case studies in the project emphasised relationships between authors as key. #IASPR18
Genre competence. #IASPR18
Fletcher: the romance genre world is an imagined, as well as real, world, typified by extended sociality and links beyond the author's own social circle (eg. Georgette Heyer). #IASPR18
Driscoll: characters and their relationships are privileged in romance, which makes sense given the genre's meta-discourses. #IASPR18
Driscoll: there is a productive tension between predictability and freshness in romance. #IASPR18
Wilkins: the borders of the Australian romance genre world are not fixed, but expand and contract, dependent on points of connections and disconnections. #IASPR18
