Romance for the Curious: Why Study Romance (Series: The Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Humanities & Arts Majors for Academic & Career Advisors, Teachers, and Subject Librarians, and their Students)

Professor, University of California Los Angeles

Dr Frederick Burwick, Research Professor at UCLA, is author and editor of thirty-three books and one hundred fifty articles. He has worked extensively in Anglo-German literary relations. He is editor of The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oxford UP, 2009) and general editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). Recent monographs include Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting (Cambridge UP, 2009) and Playing to the Crowd, London Popular Theatre, 1780-1830 (Palgrave, 2011).

Professor of English, Virginia Union University

Dr Rita B. Dandridge is a professor of English in the Department of Languages and Literature at Virginia State University. She received her B.A. degree in English from Virginia Union University, her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Howard University. Her books include Ann Allen Shockley: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (Greenwood, 1987), Black Women’s Blues: A Literary Anthologyy, 1934-1988 (G. K. Hall, 1992), and Black Women’s Activism: Reading African American Women’s Historical Romances (Peter Lang, 2004). Her articles have appeared in various journals, including African American Review, Black American Literature Forum, Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, CLA Journal, Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature, Journal of Intercultural Disciplines, and MELUS. She is a recipient of the TIAA-CREF Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award 2004 from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Professor, Lancaster University

Dr Lynne Pearce is Chair of Literary Theory and Women's Writing in the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster University, UK. Alongside her other research interests (broadly, reading/reception and epistemology), she has been working on romantic love (both the discourse/phenomenon and the textual representaiton thereof) since the mid-1990s. Her key publications in this field include: Romance Revisited (edited with Jackie Stacey), 1995; Fatal Attractions: Rescripting Literature and Film (edited with Gina Wisker), 1997; Romance Writing (2007); and, most recently, two essays on 'Romantic Love and Repetition' for the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2011) and Routledge collection, Trauma and Romance, edited by Jean-Paul Ganteau and Susana Onega (2013). Most recently, she has moved on to a new project on (car) driving (both in terms of cultural history and phenomenology) which – although it may not, at first, appear to be related to romance – is especially concerned with ‘altered states of consciousness’ that have a good deal in common with the condition of love. 

Professor, Swansea University

Dr Lloyd Hughes Davies is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Translation and Communication at Swansea University, UK. He is author of Isabel Allende (London: Grant and Cutler, 2000) (Critical Guides to Spanish Texts) and Projections of Peronism in Argentine Autobiography, Biography and Fiction (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007) which covers writers such as Abel Posse, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Mario Szichman and Luisa Valenzuela. He has also published journal articles on other writers, for example, Manuel Puig and Laura Restrepo. He is currently working on a monograph on the representation of madness in Latin American literature. At undergraduate level, he teaches Spanish language as well as cultural modules that include Cuban film, Argentine tango and the works Gabriel García Márquez. At postgraduate level he contributes to the MA in Professional Translation (both technical and literary pathways) and supervises four doctoral students in literature and translation.

Lecturer in Spanish

Dr Chris Pountain was Lecturer in Spanish and Linguistics in the University of Nottingham and Senior Lecturer in Romance Philology in the University of Cambridge, where he is a Life Fellow of Queens' College, before coming to Queen Mary in 2004. He has written 'A History of the Spanish Language through Texts' (Routledge, 2001) and 'Exploring the Spanish Language' (Arnold, 2003), as well as many articles on the history and structure of Spanish and the Romance languages; he has also published a number of reference works on Spanish language.

Assistant Chair and Associate Professor

Woodbury University

Beginning in 1992, Richard Matzen studied Writing in graduate school: Creative Writing, and Rhetoric, and Writing when English is a second language. Later, he was a co-editor for an international academic book, Reformation: The Teaching and Learning of English in Electronic Environments (Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2007). At Woodbury University in 2005, he founded the writing program and served as Chair of the Writing Department until the fall of 2013. Now, as an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair, he helps the department prepare for offering a Professional Writing degree, beginning in the fall of 2016.

Professor of Psychology

American University

Barry McCarthy, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at American University, a diplomat in clinical psychology, and a certified sex and marital therapist. He has authored 12 books, 26 book chapters, over 100 professional articles, and presented over 350 professional workshops nationally and internationally.

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of History

Brock University

Mark G. Spencer is Associate Professor and Chair of the History  

Department at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He  

regularly teaches the early U.S. history survey and upper-level  

lecture courses and graduate seminars on the American Enlightenment  

and the American Revolution. He is the author or editor of twelve  

published volumes, including David Hume and Eighteenth-Century  

America (University of Rochester Press, 200frita5) his monograph which was  reissued in a paperback edition in 2010. That book was based on his  PhD dissertation (University of Western Ontario, 2001) which was  

awarded a Governor General’s Gold Medal and also the John Bullen Prize  of the Canadian Historical Association as the best history PhD in  Canada. His recent publications include a SSHRCC-supported volume on  David Hume: Historical Thinker, Historical Writer (Pennsylvania  State University Press) and his forthcoming edited volume, The  Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, supported by a  Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence.

Assistant Professor of Spanish

Ball State University

Dr. Stephen Hessel is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Ball State University. His lifelong love of the written word has lead him to work primarily with the works of Miguel de Cervantes, author of the renowned novel Don Quixote. He has published several articles about the subject and edited an edition of Cervantes’ posthumous work titled Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. He is presently engaged in a book project analyzing various interpretations of and reactions to Cervantes work. He has taught Spanish language and literature at all levels of higher education for almost a decade. His love for teaching and mentoring students—an unexpected and pleasant surprise as his career developed—is one of the most rewarding aspects of his job. He always strives to bring the language and text to life for each of his students. A native of Buffalo New York, Dr. Hessel lives in Muncie Indiana with his wife, two daughters, two cats, and dog. In his spare time he enjoys playing banjo, running, gardening, and reading fantasy novels. He dreams of, one day, living in Spain full-time and writing a better-than-poor novel or collection of short stories.

The Curious Academic Publishing (Editor-in-Chief)

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