The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) and the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS) is proud to sponsor an essay award in honor and memory of our colleague Dr. Conseula Francis. The award is announced during the IASPR bi-annual in-person conference, and is given to the best essay published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies in the two year period leading up to the conference. Conseula Francis’s work on popular romance fiction focused on African American authors and representations of Black love, so priority for the Francis Award will be given to manuscripts that address Black-authored popular romance fiction and other work on Black love. Manuscripts on the diversity of, and diversities within, popular romance and romantic love culture—e.g., diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class, sexuality, disability, or age—will also be considered.
Associate provost and professor of English and African American Studies at the College of Charleston, Francis was the author of The Critical Reception of James Baldwin: 1963-2010 (2014) and the editor of Conversations with Octavia Butler (2009). Dr. Francis’s work on popular romance fiction focused on African American authors and representations of Black love.
In 2010, she was awarded a research grant by the Romance Writers of America for “Uncommon Pleasures: Textual Pleasure and Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary African American Romance and Erotica,” a project focused on the work of Beverly Jenkins and Zane. An essay drawn from this research, “Flipping the Script: Romancing Zane’s Urban Erotica,” was published in Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? shortly before her death. Francis wrote about Zane for the NEH-funded Popular Romance Project, as well as about romantic representations of Barack and Michelle Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign.
The judges for the Francis Award will be a mix of established and emerging scholars in the field of Popular Romance Studies, chosen by IASPR. Each winner will be invited to join the panel of judges for the subsequent award selection period.
Francis Award Winners
2025: Bridget Kies for “Saying ‘I Don’t’: Queer Romance in the Post–Marriage Equality World.”
A previous iteration of the Francis Award was given by JPRS to the best unpublished essays submitted on the topics listed above. The two winners awarded under that model were:
2020: Ellen Carter for “Asexual Romance in an Allosexual World: How Ace-Spectrum Characters (and Authors) Create Space for Romantic Love”
2018: Layla Abdullah-Poulos for “The Stable Muslim Love Triangle – Triangular Desire in African American Muslim Romance Fiction”