‘Fun doesn’t imply not educational’: Professor researches romantasy, BookTok

By Arden Berry | Arts & Life Editor

Academic studying and fashionable tales discover their elusive overlap in Dr. Sarah Walden’s analysis and sophistication.

Walden, director of the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, researches BookTok and Bookstagram. She additionally teaches Remixing the BIC: Booktok, Literacy, and New Media, a BIC capstone course.

Currently, Walden is engaged on publishing “Feral: Romantasy and Its Readers” with co-editor Kacy Tillman, professor on the University of Tampa, an edited quantity of analysis that makes an attempt to know why folks learn romantasy.

“What kinds of things do they get out of it?” Walden mentioned. “So my research is focused very much on fandoms, it’s on readership and the way that we, in my particular work, the way we access that through social media.”

The assortment will embrace a number of branches from the central theme of romantasy, with a chapter on how romantasy connects to trendy courting practices and a chunk on romantasy by way of remedy. Walden mentioned her concentrate on social media will be researched in many alternative methods, and the strategies evolve as social media platforms evolve.

“I tend to do a combination of, depending on the questions you’re asking, looking at specific hashtags and how people use them,” Walden mentioned. “I think it’s actually more helpful to do what we call a walkthrough method where you … create a research account in one of these things and then you over time curate
your algorithm.”

However, Walden mentioned there’s a tendency in academia to imagine that fashionable issues will not be worthy of examine.

“If something is popular, figuring out why and what it’s doing for people is actually a really interesting way to understand the human condition,”Walden mentioned.

And BookTok is fashionable. According to Forbes journal, as of 2025, #BookTok had over 370 billion views mixed.

“People are reading,” Walden mentioned. “Reading creates empathy. Reading creates
emotional regulation.”

Walden mentioned college students seeking to learn romantasy ought to think about what they final learn for enjoyment and go from there.

“I think if you like fun ‘Divergent’-type things, if you liked that sort of novel, ‘Hunger Games,’ you’ll probably like something like the ‘Crowns of Nyaxia’ series, so ‘Serpent and the Wings of Night’ by Carissa Broadbent or ‘The Daughter of No Worlds,’” Walden mentioned.

More usually, Walden recommends “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros, “The Knight and the Moth” by Rachel Gillig and “Legendborn” by Tracy Deonn, which is on her studying record for her capstone class.

“I think Legendborn, while not exactly a romantasy because the romantic part is a little bit more of a subplot, I think it’s a great starter series to get into it because you really get this well-built fantasy world,” Walden mentioned.

Walden additionally recommends “The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi” by Shannon Chakraborty, one other e book on her class studying record.

One pupil within the class, Prosper senior Bella Cloud, mentioned the category has group debriefs to attach books to earlier BIC readings midway by way of studying, after which college students full a e book evaluation undertaking in a type of their selecting as soon as the e book is full.

“A big emphasis from Dr. Walden is how to engage with pop culture,” Cloud mentioned. “… We’ve had a group do a podcast, I did a mix between making an inspired playlist and also some TV show recommendations … it’s just a way of seeing how we can engage with literature that we’re reading outside of the classroom, and how it realistically manifests in popular spaces.”

Chicago senior Carter Wright, one other pupil within the class, mentioned he learn plenty of fantasy rising up.

“I read ravenously growing up, and then whenever I got to like college and like later high school, I started to have to read for school instead of for pleasure and then that kind of killed the reading for pleasure bit,” Wright mentioned.

He mentioned the category allowed him to learn for enjoyable whereas additionally doing his classwork.

“It merged those two things and I was like, ‘Oh man, I get to do fun stuff, but say it’s for like schoolwork,’” Wright mentioned. “… It was a bunch of books that I hadn’t heard of before and were fantasy vibes which is just something I’m into in general.”

Walden mentioned one of many most important issues she desires college students to know is that “fun doesn’t mean not academic.”

“We forget that things that are exciting, things that are enjoyable are also valuable, and they’re not just valuable because they’re enjoyable, but because you’re learning something about yourself,” Walden mentioned. “… It doesn’t mean you throw academics out the window, but it also means that you don’t dismiss things that are fun.”Academic studying and fashionable tales discover their elusive overlap in Dr. Sarah Walden’s analysis and sophistication.