ABSTRACT
Popular fiction continues to be the object of both academic and political Interest as educators seek to understand the role literacy plays in constructing gender, class, race, ethnic, sexual, age and national subjectivities of young women. Popular fiction represents both Ideological closure and utopian possibilities. Nowhere are these double-edged qualities more evident than In popular teen romance fiction. Texts of Desire examines stories in which desire, fantasy, politics and economics are intertwined with literacy, femininities and schooling. It focuses on the role of teen romance and other popular fiction in the construction and reconstruction of femininities Internationally. These texts, many of which focus on girls' first love experiences, have stunned the publishing world with their record sales and international readership in little over ten years. Developed in the United States amid the conservative political Reaganism, teen romance fiction condenses and articulates the long-standing fears and resentments of conservative groups regarding feminism, and women's growing independence and political power. Texts of Desire is a stimulating collection of essays which draw on multidisciplinary approaches from cultural studies and feminist theories, psychoanalysis, semiotics, reader research, and critical theory. Internationally recognised researchers explore the complexity of the worldwide teen romance novel phenomenon, and the political character of women's schooling and literacies.
