Love Across the Atlantic

Winston Churchill famously described the political alliance between the US and UK as a 'special relationship', but throughout the cultural history of these two countries there have existed transatlantic 'special relationships' of another kind affairs between British and American citizens who have fallen in love, with one another but often too with the idea(l) of that other place across the ocean. From romantic novelist Elinor Glyn in the 1920s to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle today, this collection examines some of the history, contemporary manifestations and enduring appeal of US-UK romance across popular culture. Looking at both historical and contemporary case-studies, drawn from across film, television, music, literature, news and politics, this is a timely intervention into the popular romantic discourse of US-UK relations, at a critical and transitional moment in the ongoing viability of the special relationship.

“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 Alice Guilluy amusingly calls 'a (somewhat) special relationship' between the UK-US through the focus of romantic comedy, 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 romcom.”

--Professor Celestino Deleyto, University of Zaragoza

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.

Winston Churchill famously described the political alliance between the US and UK as a 'special relationship', but throughout the cultural history of these two countries there have existed transatlantic 'special relationships' of another kind - affairs between British and American citizens who have fallen in love, with one another but often too with the idea(l) of that other place across the ocean. From romantic novelist Elinor Glyn in the 1920s to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle today, this collection examines some of the history, contemporary manifestations and enduring appeal of US-UK romance across popular culture. Looking at both historical and contemporary case studies, drawn from across film, television, music, literature, news and politics, this is a timely intervention into the popular romantic discourse of US-UK relations, at a critical and transitional moment in the ongoing viability of the special relationship. Barbara Jane Brickman is Associate Professor of Media and Gender Studies at the University of Alabama. Deborah Jermyn is Reader in Film and TV at the University of Roehampton, where she is Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures. Theodore Louis Trost is Professor in New College and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

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