The first issue of Porn Studies was released this week, becoming the first international, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to critically exploring pornography and its cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts.
"Pornography has a public presence as an object of concern and as a metaphor used to designate the boundaries of the public space," wrote the journal's coeditors, Professor Feona Attwood and Professor Clarissa Smith, on the need for such a journal.
Gerard Goggin, a professor at The University of Sydney, describes Porn Studies as providing "a space for new, adventurous, genuinely cosmopolitan rethinking of many of the things about identity, bodies, power, belonging, media, and contemporary reality that we take-for-granted, but still know too little about.”
Below are some of the inaugural journal's featured articles.
"The 'Problem' of Sexual Fantasies," explores understandings of the relations between pornography and sexual imaginaries.
"Porn and Sex Education, Porn as Sex Education," addresses the fears many parents have of what children might be learning from pornography, particularly in relation to sexual practices, sexual self-representation and sexual knowledge.
"Studying Porn Cultures," encourages interested scholars to leave the confines of their offices, and spend time in the places where pornography is made, distributed and consumed, discussed and debated, taught and adjudicated.
Porn Studies is an interdisciplinary journal informed by critical sexuality studies and work exploring the intersection of sexuality, gender, race, class, age and ability. It focuses on developing knowledge of pornographies past and present, in all their variations and around the world. Because pornography studies are still in their infancy the journal will also publish discussions that focus on theoretical approaches, methodology and research ethics. Alongside articles, the journal includes a forum devoted to shorter observations, developments, debates or issues in porn studies, designed to encourage exchange and debate.
Read more tandfonline.com/rprn.