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Perhaps the first step in making room for students to read pleasurably as well as critically is to acknowledge that all interpretive practices have strengths and weaknesses, and academic reading is no exception. Literary critical reading has its own limits, its own professional turf to defend, and its own forms of sexism. It can benefit students in any academic class on feminist literary studies to be aware of work like Johnson’s: studies that draw attention to the ways male scholars have elevated themselves above other men by comparing those men’s reading practices to women’s. This is not to say that the texts and practices privileged by scholarship are all bad, but that they are part of the same patriarchal culture that pleasurable romance reading is a part of, and susceptible to the many of the same defects. Correspondingly, just as scholarly reading has its strengths, so too does pleasurable reading. We can encourage multiple modes of approaching a text.

Julie M. Dugger, “I’m a Feminist, But…” Popular Romance in the Women’s Literature Classroom