Janice Radway, Northwestern U, received the 2012 Fellows Book Award for her 1984 book Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (U of North Carolina Press).
The award recognizes books that have made a substantial contribution to the scholarship of the communication field, as well as the broader rubric of the social sciences, and have stood the test of time. Any book nominated must have been published at least 5 years prior to the conference at which the award is presented.
Reading the Romance challenges popular myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text.
Reading the Romance was instantly recognized as a breakthrough work in feminist media and cultural studies, and it continues to be read and widely cited as a canonical text across several fields. Studying what was then dismissed as an “unworthy” literary genre, Reading the Romance provided what one distinguished nominator describes as “a brilliant exemplar of a cultural studies analysis that engages the tripartite model of inquiry … where the conditions of production, textual analysis and audience reception are considered as well as the linkages among these elements.”
Janice Radway is Professor of Communication Studies/Rhetoric and Professor of Gender Studies and American Studies at Northwestern U. Her current research interests are in the history of literacy and reading in the United States, particularly as they bear on the lives of women. Radway is a past president of the American Studies Association.
Radway was presented with the award on 26 May 2012 during ICA's 62nd Annual International Conference in Phoenix, Arizona., USA.
