Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses

This special issue addresses a field that has remained largely unexplored: the intersections between Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies and Romance Studies. The monograph brings together nine research articles, a piece of creative writing, and an interview with bestselling author Sherry Thomas that address the critical and imaginative possibilities of romance and the genre’s relevance to examine how colonial legacies continue to shape contemporary understandings of desire, intimacy and subjectivity. Collectively, the contributions of this special issue demonstrate that romantic narratives, fundamentally concerned with affective attachments, engage with histories of empire, diasporic experience, community formation, and social transformation, thus countering persistent misconceptions that reduce the genre to mere escapism.