WESTMINSTER, Md.—
McDaniel College recently was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Nora Roberts Foundation to help advance research and study of romance literature.This is the second consecutive year that the college has received funding from Roberts, a best-selling author of more than 200 romance novels.
Roberts lives in Boonsboro.
The grant supports McDaniel’s academic minor in romance fiction and an online creative-writing course on the subject, in addition to the American romance collection in Hoover Library, which has established McDaniel as one of the few centers for the study of the romance genre.
“This gift will allow the college to reinforce Ms. Roberts’ reputation in the academic and literary arenas as a master of and dedicated advocate for the romance genre,” said Roger Casey, president of McDaniel College. “It will also raise the profile of the romance novel among scholars and the academic community.”
English professor Pam Regis, a nationally recognized expert on romance novels and author of “A Natural History of the Romance Novel,” organized an international conference in November at the college, which included presentations on popular romance in the new millennium.
