First up in Romance at #popcaanz18: @DonnaMHanson, speaking to her survey results about the interactions of romance fiction and feminism.
Hanson had about 200 writers and 600 readers respond to her survey - a really rich dataset! #popcaanz18
Hanson: 47% of respondents wrote contemporary, and the genre they most preferred to read outside romance was crime. #popcaanz18
Hanson: many writers identified as feminist, and the second biggest category identified with feminist ideals but not the word. #popcaanz18
Hanson: both romance writer and reader respondents overwhelmingly identified as female. #popcaanz18
Hanson: for readers, SFF was the next most preferred genre, closely followed by crime. #popcaanz18
Hanson: readers strongly identified with the word feminist. #popcaanz18
Next up: @LucySheerman, talking about Byronic heroes in romance novels. #popcaanz18
Sheerman suggests that the shift towards the inclusion of the hero's POV in romance has opened up possibilities for Byronic anti-heroines. #popcaanz18
Sheerman: in Mills & Boon's 2016 governess books (tie-ins with the Charlotte Bronte bicentennial), the heroines must metaphorically break in to the hostile worlds of the damaged heroes. #popcaanz18
Finally in this session: Kathrina Haji Mohd Daud, on cross-cultural romance, feminism and femininity in south-east Asian fiction. #popcaanz18
Daud: some of the challenges of comparative study of SEAsian literature are linguistic, ideological, material and educational, due to the diversities of the region (10 countries, 11 languages). #popcaanz18
Daud: does the novel (a Western form) adequately represent SEAsian cultural identity, when poetry and the short story have been so strong? #popcaanz18
Daud: the novels in question position the nation in the world's gaze, and push back against and/or correct misconceptions. #popcaanz18
Daud: the obstacles in cross,-cultural romance throw into relief interracial tensions.#popcaanz18
