Document Type
Introduction
Abstract
[First paragraph]
When literary critic Nina Baym wrote, in 1978, that scholars need to question the influence of gender on “the grounds upon which certain hallowed American classics have been called great,” it was a controversial assertion. [1] It still is, and no less true. In the ensuing decades, as the field of women’s studies expanded and a new level of critical attention was paid to the role of gender in popular culture, studies of popular fiction led the way. A number of our authors in this issue of Reconstruction draw upon Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance, which was certainly the most influential of these works, but not atypical in its attempt to investigate the intricate gender dynamics at work in the consumption of romance novels and a critical attention to reader reception. Radway’s text, alongside the work of other scholars of popular fiction in gender studies and literature, established the relationship between gender and popular fiction as a crucial site of analysis in understanding both gender and literature in contemporary American culture.
Repository Citation
Leader-Picone, Cameron, and Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. "Editors’ Introduction: Gender and Popular Fiction." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 3, 2011, pp. 1–5. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss3/1