The crowded street

We also see, and you referenced the last several chapters, which explore alternatives to the romance as a model.

So someone like the writer Winifred Holtby, best known for her novel "South Riding." I discuss an earlier novel of hers called "The Crowded Street" that invokes, um, an alternative to marriage as the ending of a story that might appear to be a romance, but really opens up other possibilities for women, including feminist activism and the value of work.

And so I'm, I'm very interested in the ways in which we can see romance, um, view it in a more expansive way, and also in which, and I think many, many romance authors s- then and today have reclaimed the romance as a feminist genre.

So the emphasis on women's sexual desire or women's agency, um, resistance to, uh, heteronormative and patriarchal, uh, ways of imagining the romantic relationship as it's depicted.

Yes, I think students are so important in shaping-- have been so important in shaping my research over decades.

So I always want to recognize the, what I've learned from them as part of the experience of teaching.

I have not had the experience to teach, uh, a number of the texts that I write about, but I did teach, um, Winifred Holtby's The Crowded Street in a course called Wolfe and Her Circles, which I taught both at Hampshire and at Amherst.

And my understanding of that novel was deeply enriched by conversations with students, um, in those classes.