In the twenty-first century, the romance genre has gained a growing academic response, including the creation of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. Popular romance has long been so ignored and maligned that seemingly every scholarly work on it opens with a lengthy defense of the genre and its value for academic study. Even the early scholarly works on the genre approach it in ways that, while primarily respectful, make sweeping generalizations about popular romance, its texts, and its readers. This essay collection examines the position of the romance genre in the twenty-first century, and the ways in which romance responds to and influences the culture and community in which it exists. Essays are divided into six sections, which cover the genre's relationship with masculinity, the importance of consent, historical romance, representation, social status and web-based romance fiction.

One of the FX network's most successful original productions, Sons of Anarchy roared onto the scene in September 2008 and dominated FX's programming for seven seasons. Following an eponymous outlaw motorcycle club on its Shakespearean journey, Sons of Anarchy took its audience on a wild ride powered by a high-octane brand of masculinity so potent the fumes virtually seeped through the screen. The masculinity on display in Sons of Anarchy is complex, complicated, and in many ways problematic, both within the story and as a text. Kurt Sutter, series creator, writer, and showrunner, depicts male characters who wear their manliness on their backs and act first from their steel-clad, highly traditional sense of what it means to be a man. The show both vaunts that sense of masculinity and challenges it, leaving characters and audience alike to grapple with the implications and consequences an outlaw biker's ride-or-die life. This collection includes a robust array of scholarly perspectives on Sons of Anarchy's complicated presentation of masculinity and the cultural implications thereof.