The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has provided nearly $1 million in taxpayer funding since 2010 to “The Popular Romance Project,” an academic program to study the genre of popular romance fiction.
The Project aims to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective,” and will culminate with a 2015 documentary called “Love Between the Covers,” a “content-rich website,” an academic symposium, and a “nationwide series of library programs dealing with the past, present, and future of the romance novel.”
Under Obama-appointed former chairman Jim Leach and Obama-appointed acting chairman Carole M. Watson, NEH has given $914,000 to the Project, according to Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual “Wastebook.”
President Barack Obama, whose re-election campaign was boosted by Democrat claims of a Republican “War on Women,” requested $154.4 million in funding for NEH in the fiscal year 2014 budget, a 5.1 percent increase, despite Republican efforts to cut the agency’s budget.
In the spirit of academic inquiry, let’s have a look at some of the book titles featured on the Popular Romance Project’s website, which was funded by a $250,000 NEH grant…
