ABSTRACT |
Is Porn
Studies the last academic frontier?
One
might say yes judging from the controversy pornography still stirs up in
academic
environments. And yet, if one looks back a couple of decades, “porn
studies” is a fairly well-trodden ground, subject of a considerable
amount of literature, university courses, conferences, exhibitions, and
film and video programs. However, AEDEAN has remained rather oblivious
to the existence of the topic.
This round table discussion will trace the development of porn
studies--from the early contributions of Richard Dyer and William
Kendrick to the more recent ones of Lisa Rudnick, Linda Williams, and
Chris Straayer--it will critically survey the state of the field, it
will examine the mutations of explicit sexual representation in digital
and web-based formats, it will explore the representation of ethnicity
in porn, and, from a more general perspective, it will point out the
importance of porn studies for the different modalities of
Anglo-American studies.
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