So yes, I’ve finally done an article on the P-word. “Visceral pedagogies: Pornography, affect, and safety in the university classroom” is very freshly out with The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies: a manuscript version is available here.
And here’s the abstract:
With the ubiquitous presence and accessibility of online pornography and the gradual yet drastic rise of porn studies as an interdisciplinary field of investigation, pornography has become a recurrent theme in media studies, gender studies, sociology, and cultural studies curricula. Existing literature on pornography and university pedagogy nevertheless makes it evident that this is not simply a topic among others but a potential source of tension in the classroom, within the university, with the media and public opinion. Drawing on my own experiences of teaching pornography in Finnish universities since 2005, this article examines the reasons for including pornography in the curriculum (the basic question as to “why”) and the different ways of doing this (the questions as to “how” and “what”). This pedagogical focus is tied to exploration of both the ethical concerns and affective dynamics involved in bringing porn to the classroom, namely the questions of how the affective dynamics of pornographic materials may be handled and how this translates as, or connects to academic teaching as affective labor.
Susanna Paasonen 