![]() ![]() Throughout the text, Radway is very clear that this is not a typical group of readers and consistently qualifies her conclusions. ![]() Radway records several group discussions, interviews 16 particularly articulate readers, watches Evans in her work environment, and collects an extensive questionnaire. She also writes a newsletter on the novels and has strong opinions about the value of romance reading for women. The group is led by Dorothy Evans, a bookstore clerk who recommends romance novels to a batch of loyal customers. These readers, almost all of whom are white, middle class, married women, live in a commuter suburb of a Midwestern city – called Smithton. Reading the Romance is an ethnographic study of a group of 42 romance novel readers. The political goals behind this argument are of less interest to me than the example of active readership she demonstrates throughout the book. The hope being that if the public is alerted to a problem in cultural life, they will use this knowledge to advocate resistance and social change. As an American Studies scholar, Radway wanted to expose the culture of patriarchy that pervades modern life in America. ![]() 1991) as the text for our discussion of the history of reading and the history of book use. ![]() This week I assigned my students Janice Radway’s classic Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature(University of North Carolina Press, 1984 repr. ![]()
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