Sasha Switz

Abstract: The popular romance genre, while historically seen as a category of fiction promoting anti-feminist rhetoric and ideology, has now claimed a more feminist turn in the content it's producing. However, much of its feminist sentiment is surface level, not promoting any actual productive feminist doctrine. I argue that the works in the popular romance genre claiming to be feminist instead suffer from a postfeminist sensibility, not contributing to actual feminist dialogue and instead forwarding regressive ideas of gender. I will demonstrate this by analyzing the presentation of normative gender roles in Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis.

Sasha Switz will be graduating from FAU in Spring 2024 with her Bachelor of Arts in English. She is extremely glad to almost be done with her undergraduate degree, and there will be a long break between this degree and the next one.