Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis (Master's)

Department or Program

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

First Advisor

Regine Rosenthal

Second Advisor

Min Young Godley

Third Advisor

Donald Pease

Abstract

Popular romance fiction is the highest-grossing genre in contemporary publishing, yet it remains one of the least examined in academic scholarship. As this thesis argues, while texts of this genre have been marginalized and stigmatized for their perceived lack of literary sophistication, they prove to be some of the most radical in terms of cultural impact. Their dismissal is not incidental but symptomatic of the very systems of oppression the romance novels work to disrupt. This thesis will examine these radical texts and uncover the cultural work they perform on their readers by using an analytical framework newly developed here, named Transitive Reading Theory.

Transitive Reading Theory, built upon the scholarship of Wolfgang Iser, Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Robin Dembroff, bell hooks, Lisa Lowe, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Todd McGowen, among others, maps the ideological journey a reader undergoes through engagement with romance texts. Beginning with the establishment of particular identity, the theory traces a reader's movement through the exposure of sites of oppression, the cultivation of empathy and solidarity, acts of subversion and resistance, and finally toward post-identity thought and the possibility of universality.

Chapter One establishes the historical foundations of romance fiction, demonstrating that the genre's engagement with feminist ideology, female agency, and social critique extends back to its origins in the seventeenth century. Chapter Two introduces and fully defines Transitive Reading Theory, situating it within existing scholarship and articulating its methodology. The subsequent chapters apply Transitive Reading across five novels. Feminist literary theory frames the analysis of Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Mist and Fury and Lisa Kleypas's Hello Stranger, while queer and gender studies anchor the reading of Casey McQuiston's The Pairing. Stuart Hall's and Lisa Lowe's frameworks of diaspora and hybridity guide the examination of Uzma Jalaluddin's Ayesha at Last, and intersectionality and the female gaze structure the close reading of Talia Hibbert's Get A Life, Chloe Brown.

Collectively, these analyses demonstrate that popular romance fiction functions as a vehicle for mass cultural critique — offering readers accessible pathways to critical consciousness, solidarity, and an expanded sense of what is possible. This thesis hopes to offer a framework for analyzing the cultural movement that romance novels generate, so they can be fully integrated into literary and cultural scholarship.

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