Cum Laude: Publishing House Launches Porn Studies Journal
My college journal assignments would have been so much easier to get through if they’d dealt with subject matter like this!
Stroll down the venerated halls of any of the world’s greatest universities and you will find first-class brains contemplating all the most fascinating disciplines imaginable: biology, literature, art, music, philosophy and more. Despite its popularity and cultural currency, adult entertainment is underrepresented. Porn Studies, a new journal dedicated to serious adult film scholarship, seeks to change that.
Available from London’s Routledge publishing house, the journal is “the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts,” with emphasis on “the intersection of sexuality, gender, race, class, age and ability,” according to editors Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith.
Some of the journal’s first articles have the jargon-y sound of more typical humanities publications (“Porn’s pedagogies: teaching porn studies in the academic-corporate complex”), but others have an edgier feel that befits the provocative nature of the subject matter: “Revisiting dirty looks” or “Gonzo, trannys, and teens.”
“Porn is becoming an important part of increasing numbers of people’s lives, although what that means to them is something we still know very little about,” the journal’s editors told the Washington Post. “The ways that porn is produced and distributed have undergone rapid, radical and incremental change, but much of the popular discussion about those changes is still based on guesswork.”
Although much of the press attention seems to fall in the category of puzzled stares, the basic premise of the journal is a good one, and long overdue. French philosopher Jacques Derrida once cheekily noted that the one thing he’d really like to know about the world’s most famous philosophers is what their sex lives were like. Derrida, as ever, was probably only half serious, but he hits upon an important point. Sex, sexuality, and the way we express it in our lives and through adult entertainment provides valuable insight into the human condition. Wouldn’t it be great for there to be a serious academic forum for the world’s greatest minds to probe all the fascinating issues concerning pornography?
After all, there’s definitely room for a couple porn-music guitar licks amongst all the refined Pomp and Circumstance of academia, don’t you think?
You can access the journal in full here.
