The Journal of Popular Romance Studies calls for essays, interviews, and pedagogical materials for a special forum on love and religion in popular culture, anywhere in the world. The forum is guest-edited by Lynn S. Neal (author of Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction). The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2012, and the forum is slated for publication in September, 2013.
Topics of particular interest include sacred love stories retold in popular culture, religious rhetoric in popular love songs (and vice versa), romantic love as a surrogate or secular religion, political deployments of Islam and / or Christianity as “religions of love,” and representations of interfaith romance.
Published by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR), the peer-reviewed Journal of Popular Romance Studies is the first academic journal to focus exclusively on representations of romantic love across national and disciplinary boundaries. Our editorial board includes representatives from English, Comparative Literature, Ethnomusicology, History, Religious Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and other fields. JPRS is available without subscription at http://jprstudies.org.
Please submit scholarly papers of 5000-10,000 words by December 1, 2012, to An Goris, Managing Editor managing.editor(at)jprstudies.org. Submissions should be Microsoft Word documents, with citations in MLA format. Please remove all identifying material (i.e., running heads with the author’s name) so that submissions can easily be sent out for anonymous peer review. Suggestions for appropriate peer reviewers are welcome.
Visit the website at http://jprstudies.org/submissions/special-issue-call-for-papers/#religion