Note from the Field: Reflecting on Romance Novel Research: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

In 2011, I co-authored an article in the journal Sexuality & Culture describing a study that I had done on sexual scripts in romance novels entitled, “‘Whatever the approach, Tab B still fits into Slot A’: Twenty years of sex scripts in romance novels” (Ménard & Cabrera, 2011). Shortly after the article appeared, a discussion about the paper took place on “Teach Me Tonight,” an academic blog devoted to the study of popular romance novels. The goal of this article is to further that discussion by exploring previous research on romance novels in the social sciences, explaining the rationale behind the methodology of my study, critically evaluating that study, and making suggestions for future work by romance novel researchers.

Keywords

• psychology research methods
• contemporary single-title romances
• sexual script theory