In collaboration with the 2017 Life Sciences and Society Symposium on The Science of Love, the University of Missouri Libraries will feature a lecture by Dr. Denice Adkins on Wednesday, October 11, at 2:00 pm in Ellis Library room 114a. Dr. Adkins is an associate professor in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies and chair of the Library Information Science Program. She has researched genre fiction readers and their motivations, and in this lecture, she turns her attention to the genre of romance.
Human beings are social by nature, and built for social interaction. Previous research has pointed out that reading literary fiction improves people’s empathy. The romance genre enjoys huge popularity and a billion-dollar sales market. It is not, however, literary fiction. In this brief review, I discuss the romance genre, its characteristics, and the visceral reactions it produces, and suggest that romance also helps people feel closer to others.
The Allure of Romance Novels, or Why Sex Sells is presented in conjunction with an exhibition of rare books from the department of Special Collections and Rare Books, on view in the Ellis Library Colonnade October 6-30.