As a student in the MLS program, I am interested in not only what people are reading, but also what analysis of genre, subject, and authorship can convey. My proposed project involves creating a database of romance novels spanning the last 70 years or so as modern romance has developed into a genre and publishing juggernaut. Beyond their commercial success, romance novels play an important role in readers lives. I am interested in exploring that role and related issues of representation, cultural appropriation, and authorship among the body of novels I study. By looking at a sample of romance novels over a period of time, I hope to explore the development of the genre and track themes, subjects, and sub-genres as they evolved over that period.I will use DH techniques like TEI to encode the characteristics of each novel, avoiding encoding the complete novels due to copyright restrictions.
HANNAH ENSIGN-GEORGE
MLS Candidate, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
