Reimagining the Romance Novel [6-weeks, $180 Suggested]
Instructor: Hollis | Wednesdays July 7-August 11 | 6:00-8:00 PM ET
In an interview with Jasmine Guillory on Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom’s podcast “Hear to Slay,” the three discuss Guillory’s romance novels and their joyful depiction of black women as revolutionary. According to McMillan Cottom, efforts to merely “color the characters brown” often expose “the unexamined racism” of the genre’s formula. But when authors like Guillory go beyond simply inserting diverse characters into the formula, it has the potential to reinvent the romance genre itself by subverting traditional gender tropes.
In this course, we will read novels that recreate the romance genre: The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory, Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert, and The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. We will explore how these novels take the conventional formula of the romance novel and reimagine it by including characters that represent a range of experiences, including characters who have disabilities, are racially diverse and/or queer. We will think about how this much maligned and marginalized genre actually provides a space of comfort for its readers and how the increasingly inclusive representation in the genre imagines romance and love for everyone.
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If at any point up to 48 hours before your first class session you realize you will be unable to take the class, we will work with you to reallocate your funds to a future class, to another student’s scholarship, or refund it. After classes begin, we are only able to make partial refunds and adjustments.