In this course, students study women writers, editors, readers, and/or the portrayal of women in literary texts. Individual sections vary in emphasis. This section focuses on the gendered genre of romance, moving from Jane Austen to Bridget Jones to Bridgerton as we consider how the typical terms used to denigrate feminized literary production—"chick lit," "fluff," "guilty pleasures"—bely the meaningful work these texts and their readers do. We'll address the political stakes of the marriage plot, consider how romance novels intersect with questions of empire, economy, power, and identity, engage reader-response criticism that shows the novel interpretive and critical strategies used by romance readers (including forays into BookTok), and study the romance's influence on literary history, from its contributions to the rise of the novel to its load-bearing role in contemporary publishing. In short, we’ll pay serious attention to the politics of pleasure.