I know it's been a long time since I posted here. I've been mostly busy over adding entries to the Romance Scholarship Database. However, I do have a new article out, "Feeling Judged: Reflections on Pornography and Romance from a Minotaur Milking Farm", at the Journal of Popular Romance Studies. Here's the abstract:
In general, “pornography has been defined in terms of content (sexually explicit depictions of genitalia and sexual acts), lack thereof (materials without any redeeming artistic, cultural or social value), intention (texts intended to arouse their consumers) and effect (texts arousing their consumers)” (Paasonen, Nikunen and Saarenmaa 1). This article explores the relationship between pornography and romance via an examination of just one romance novel, C. M. Nascosta’s Morning Glory Milking Farm (2021), not because it is representative of the entire genre, but because its setting, plot, and characterisation facilitate such an exploration. Consensus seems unlikely to emerge as to whether or not romance fiction meets the criteria for classification as pornography. Even those works lacking explicit sexual content may be considered akin to pornography (‘emotional porn’) due to the genre’s focus on producing emotional responses in its readers.
As I mention in the article, it seems a particularly important time to think about the relationship between romance and pornography given that there has been a rise in book banning due to the presence of sexual content and some of the banned books have been romance novels. Here's the link again.
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