Lynn Comella

The Necessary Revolution: Sex-Positive Feminism in the Post-Barnard Era

In this interview sexologist and author Carol Queen discusses feminist and queer sexual politics in the pre and post Barnard eras. Despite the policing of sexual desires and practices during the height of the feminist sex wars, Queen argues that sex-positive feminists and sex radicals were able to create alternative spaces, resources, and counter-discourses that had tangible effects on many peoples sexual lives and identities.

Studying porn cultures

This article uses the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas as a lens through which to examine the business and culture of pornography. I argue that adult-industry trade shows are data-rich field sites that allow pornography scholars to move beyond a focus on the pornographic text and examine the wider industry context that gives rise to contemporary porn cultures. These events are also occasions to practice ‘porn studies-in-action,’ a research approach that involves scholars spending time in those places where pornography is made, distributed, and consumed in an effort to better understand how cultural discourses and practices are organized in specific institutional and organizational contexts. Porn studies-in-action is a form of engaged scholarship that can take as its focus any number of cultural sites, from erotic film festivals to feminist porn sets to adult video stores, with the aim of empirically deepening our porn studies archives.