Below is some essential chick lit academic reading for those researching the subject:
On chick lit and postfeminism
Brooks, Ann. 1997. Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory, and Cultural Forms. London: Routledge.
Ferriss, Suzanne, and Mallory Young. 2006. “Introduction.” In Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction, 1-13. New York: Routledge.
Genz, Stephanie and Benjamin A. Brabon. 2009. Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Gill, Rosalind. 2007. Gender and the Media. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Gill Rosalind and Christina Scharff. 2011. “Introduction.” In New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, edited by Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, 1-20. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harzewski, Stephanie. 2011. Chick Lit and Postfeminism. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press.
McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage.
Thoma, Pamela. 2014. “Romancing the Self and Negotiating Consumer Citizenship in Asian American Labor Lit.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 8(1): 17–35.
Whelehan, Imelda. 2005. The Feminist Bestseller: From Sex and the Single Girl to Sex and the City. Basingstoke England; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
On single women
Budgeon, Shelley. 2003. Choosing a Self : Young Women and the Individualization of Identity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
———. 2011. Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Gender in Late Modernity. Basingtoke, England: Palgrave McMillan.
Fraser, MB. 2001. Solitaire: The Intimate Lives of Single Women. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross.
Illouz, Eva. 1997. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ingraham, Chrys. 1999. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.
Karlyn, Kathryn. 1995. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genre of Laughter. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Kaufmann, Jean-Claude. 2008. The Single Woman and the Fairytale Prince. London:
Polity.
Radner, Hilary. 1999. “Introduction – Queering the Girl.” In Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s, edited by Hilary Radner and Moya Lockett, 1-35. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Raisborough, Jayne. 2011. Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan
Taylor, Anthea. 2012. Single Women in Popular Culture: The Limits of Postfeminism. Basingtoke, England: Palgrave MacMillan.
On romance reading
Coward, Rosalind. 1984. Female Desire. London: Paladin.
Dudovitz, RL. 1990. The Myth of Superwoman: Women’s Bestsellers in France and the United States. London: Routledge.
Jones, Ann Rosalind. 1986. “Mills & Boon Meets Feminism.” In The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction, edited by Jean Radford, 195-218. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Modleski, Tania. 1982. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. Hamden: Archon Books.
Pearce, Lynne and Jackie Stacey. 1995. “The Heart of the Matter: Feminists Revisit Romance.” In Romance Revisited, edited by Lynne Pearce and Jackie Stacey, 9-11. New York: New York University Press.
Radford, Jean. 1986. “Introduction.” In The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction. History Workshop Series, edited by Jean Radford, 1-22. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Radway, Janice A. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: The University of North Caroline Press.
Snitow, Ann Barr. 1983. “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different.” In Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, edited by Snitow, Ann, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, 245-263. New York: Monthly Review Press.
On romance reading in India
Parameswaran, Radhika. 2002. “Reading Fictions of Romance: Gender, Sexuality, and Nationalism in Postcolonial India.” Journal of Communication 52 (4): 832–51.
Puri, Jyoti. 1997. “Reading Romance Novels in Postcolonial India.” Gender and Society 1(4): 434-452.
On the Indian novel
Anjaria, Ulka. 2015. “Introduction.” In The History of the Indian Novel in English, 1-30. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dwyer, Rachel. 2000. All You Want is Money: All You Need is Love. London: Cassel.
Fraser, MB. 2001. Solitaire: The Intimate Lives of Single Women. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross.
Joshi, Priya. 2002. In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture and the English Novel in India. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kasbekar, Asha. 2006. Pop Culture India! Media, Arts, Lifestyle. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.
Kumar, Priya. 2008. Limiting Secularism: The Ethics of Co-Existence in Indian Literature and Film. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Lau, Lisa Ee Jia. 2006. “The New Indian Woman: Who Is She, and What Is ‘New’ about Her?” Women’s Studies International Forum 29(2): 159-71.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi. 1984. “Realism and Reality: Indian Women as Protagonists in Four Nineteenth Century Novels.” Economic and Political Weekly 19 (2): 76-85.
———. 2000. The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2006. “Epic and the Novel in India.” In The Novel: Volume 1, edited by Franco Moretti, 566-631. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Narayan, Shyamala A. and Mee Jon. “Novelists of the 1950s and 1960s.” In A Concise History of Indian Literature in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrortra, 247-260. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Narayanan, Pavithra. 2012. What Are You Reading?: The World Market and Indian Literary Production. New Delhi: Routledge.
Singh, Jyotsna G. 1996. Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogue: ‘Discoveries’ of India in the Language of Colonialism. London: Routledge.
Varughese, E. Dawson. 2013. Reading New India: Post-millenial Indian fiction in English. London: Bloomsbury
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