Love Across the Atlantic

Barbara Jane Brickman is Associate Professor of Media and Gender Studies at the University of Alabama. Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, The Journal of Film and Video, and Journal of Popular Music Studies. Since the publication of her first book, New American Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in 1970s Film, she has written a volume on the film Grease for the Cinema and Youth Cultures series. She is also the founder and director of the Druid City Girls Media Camp in Tuscaloosa, AL. Deborah Jermyn is Reader in Film & TV at the University of Roehampton, where she is Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures. She is author and editor of 11 books, including Nancy Meyers (2017) and (with Stacey Abbott) Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (2009). She continues to work on gender, genre, and Hollywood, with a particular interest in ageing femininities. Theodore Louis Trost holds a joint appointment in the New College and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, where he teaches courses in religion and popular culture, the Gospel of Mark, and songwriting. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in American religious history. He also worked for nine years as a flight attendant with the now-defunct Pan American World Airways.

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsList of ContributorsINTRODUCTION – Still crazy after all these years?: The 'special relationship' in popular mediaPART ONE – '[Not] just a girl, standing in front of a boy…': Feminism, women and transatlantic romance1. 'Atlantic Liners, It Girls and Old Europe in Elinor Glyn's Romantic Adventures', by Karen Randell and Alexis Weedon2. '"World Turned Upside Down": The Role of Revolutions in Maya Rodale's Regency-Set Romances', by Veera Mäkelä3. 'Bridget Jones's Special Relationship: No Filth, Please, We're Brexiteers', by William Brown4. 'Sharon Horgan, postfeminism and the transatlantic psycho-politics of "woemantic" comedy', by Caroline Bainbridge PART TWO – Love beyond borders: The global city, cosmopolitanism and transatlantic space5. '"British people are awful": Gentrification, queerness and race in the US-UK romances of Looking and You're the Worst', by Martha Shearer 6. 'Catastrophe: Transatlantic Love in East London', by Frances Smith7. 'On the Fragility of Love Across the Atlantic: Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Romance in Drake Doremus's Like Crazy (2011)', by Manuela Ruiz 8. 'Nancy Meyers's The Parent Trap and The Holiday, and the mise-en-scène of romance and transatlantic space', by Deborah Jermyn PART THREE - Two lovers divided by a common language: 'British-ness', 'American-ness' and identity9. '"American, a slut, and out of your league": Working Title's equivocal relationship with Americanness', by Jay Bamber10. '"It's the American Dream": British audiences and the contemporary Hollywood rom-com', by Alice Guilluy11. 'Business-like Lords and Gentlemanly Businessmen: The Romance Hero in Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowers Series', by Inmaculada Pérez-Casal12. 'Imagine: The Beatles, John Lennon, and love across borders', by Theodore Louis TrostPART FOUR - Political coupledom: Flirting with the special relationship13. '"Political Soulmates": the "Special Relationship" of Reagan and Thatcher, and the Powerful Chemistry of Celebrity Coupledom', by Shelley Cobb14. '"I Will Be with You, Whatever": Blair and Bush's Baghdadi Bromance', by Hannah Hamad15. 'Holding hands as the ship sinks: Trump and May's special relationship', by Neil Ewen16. '"Harry has gone over to the dark side": Race, Royalty and US-UK Romance in Brexit Britain', by Nathalie Weidhase

Spanning a century of representations, from the novels of Elinor Glyn to the Prince Harry - Meghan Markle royal romance, this volume, scholarly and entertaining in equal parts, explores the seemingly endless dimensions and ambiguities of what one essay amusingly calls ‘a (somewhat) special relationship’ between the UK-US through the focus of romance, bringing together, in a surprisingly coherent whole, cosmopolitanism and gentrification, Julia Roberts and Tony Blair, Bridget Jones and Donald Trump, Obama and Sharon Horgan, the Beatles and Brexit. An endlessly inventive book and a must read for those who, in and outside the academy, continue to dispute the cultural relevance of romantic comedy.