Jul 042016
 

imagesMy name is Sherry Mason and I am a psychology student at the University of Central Oklahoma. I, along with a counselling student, Adam Everson, and professor of psychology, Dr. Alicia Limke, Ph.D., are executing research in an attempt to understand the relationship needs of polyamorous people and how those needs are met through multiple partners. As it stands, there is very little research about this community. This greatly disadvantages therapists as well as individuals/couples seeking treatment.

The survey link is as follows:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/polyamory_and_attachment

The survey takes approximately 45 minutes to complete and consists of questions about relationships, feelings toward being a sexual minority (i.e., polyamorous), and some general questions on personality. This study is open to individuals of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The applicant will also be entered into a random drawing for a $5.00 gift card to Amazon.com. The safety and privacy of all participants is highly important, we ask that anyone be allowed to share the link to this survey, but to refrain from disclosing any information about their involvement to keep their participation completely anonymous. This project has been approved by the University of Central Oklahoma Institutional Review Board #16107.

If you have any question or would like more information please feel free to contact me at: smason5 (at) uco.edu. Or my associate: Adam Everson, aeverson (at) uco.edu. Or my advisor: Dr. Alicia Limke, Ph.D., alike (at) uco.edu.

Thank you for your time and consideration!
Sherry Mason, AA Psychology
University of Central Oklahoma
Department of Psychology

Nov 302014
 

pstudies
I See You, Seeing Me, See You, Seeing Me, See You: Surveillance, Pornography, Porn Studies
Journal: Porn Studies
Guest Editor: Evangelos Tziallas, Concordia University

Narrative film’s increasingly frequent emulation of CCTV and surveillance footage has engendered a dialogue about the intersections between cinema and surveillance, and their historical and theoretical antecedents. Most of the dialogue revolves around formal changes and the ontological and political ramifications of film’s and technologically mediated surveillance’s overlaps. Despite this growing exchange, work on how explicit sexual representation and pornography have been impacted by the rise of the surveillance society, and the overlaps between various personal and expressive apparatuses and surveillance technologies, if not the absorption of the former by the latter, are few and far between.

In Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible,” ([1989]/1999) Linda Williams’ Foucauldian inspired analysis explored narrative heterosexual pornography as one of the latest sources of “knowledge-pleasure.” Accounts of pornography as forms of audio-visual knowledgepower have proliferated since Williams’ work, but recent technological, social, and cultural political changes require we think about the impact technologically mediated surveillance has had on pornographic representation, consumption, and production. Knowledge-power is “surveillance,” but the proliferation and ubiquity of various digital, computer, and recording technologies focus and transform the meaning and deployment of knowledge-power and knowledge-pleasure.

In “Surveillance is Sexy,” (2009) David Bell explores “sites where surveillance technologies and an emerging ‘surveillance aesthetic’ are being repurposed through their overt sexualisation,” pondering “whether the mobilization of voyeurism and exhibitionism can be read as ways of resisting surveillance” (203). But where does the line between surveillance and voyeurism exist in a hyper-visual and visible world? Voyeurism is predicated on the notion of privacy, but what is the meaning of voyeurism in an increasingly transparent world where privacy is not only being taken away but willfully given up? At what point does the same piece of technology go from being a tool for “voyeurism” to a tool for “surveillance”? How do the simulation of surveillance and the foregrounding of recording and simulation technologies alter pornographic texts and experiences, which are often understood as the epitomes of voyeurism?

In The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies (1996), William Bogard lucidly argues that “to understand what the technology of surveillance is and the effects it aims for today, increasingly we have to appreciate the fantasy that drives it, and that, in a word, is simulation” (9), going on to point out that “surveillance without limits is exactly what simulation is all about. Simulation, that is, is a way of satisfying a wish to see everything, and to see it in advance…” (15). How are simulation, surveillance, and voyeurism consonant with each other and how are their synchronicity expressed and experienced? Conversely, what discords, be they overt or underlying, does their convergence produce at a representational, legal, political, social, and theoretical level?

There is a tendency in surveillance studies to think of surveillance wholly within the realm of the technological, the social, and the geopolitical, as if these discursive spheres are not directly implicated in the observation, regulation, dissection, and control of the body through sex. There is, likewise, a tendency for researchers to be blind to how surveillance is both implicitly masculine and heterosexual, particularly when mediated through technology. Conversely, works on pornography tend to focus on discipline and ideology, rather than how these ideas are refashioned by technology, due in large part to the legacy and residue of the porn wars. This special issue is inspired by a proposed panel for the upcoming Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference (Seattle 2014), and seeks to bring together research from the growing fields of surveillance studies and porn studies into closer proximity. It seeks to fill in intellectual and scholarly gaps, and hopes to create a foundation upon which further research and engagement can be built.

Possible topics and avenues of inquiry include:
-Sexualizing authority, disciplinarity, and the police state (cops, the military, prisons, “torture,” superhero porn parodies)
-Amateur pornography and self-surveillance (XTube, Grindr/Blendr, Cam4)
-Sexualized representations of dystopia and the overly controlled society (Descent [1999])
-Surveillance and/or spying as thematic element or narrative device
-The use/representation of surveillance cameras/technologies, or the configuration of personal recording technologies as tools for surveillance in narrative pornography. (Focus/Refocus [2009])
-Politicized representation (“Gaytanamo,” “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” porn-mashups)
-Policing national borders and racial fetishization (“My Israeli Platoon”)
-The theoretical and formal overlaps between surveillance, voyeurism, and ethnography
-Sexualizing the violation of privacy (revenge porn, webcam spying/recordings)
-Biopower and policed bodies (barebacking, fetishizing and criminalizing HIV transmission, transgendered bodies)
-Censorship, bypassing censorship, copyright issues
-“Social sorting,” sexual taxonomies, and pornographic categorizations
-Risk, data mining, and the thrill of “getting caught” on the internet
-Ethnographic studies of particular websites, and online communities and cultures (4Chan, Reddit)
-Regional analysis of surveillance supra-structures and pornography (China, Iran, Turkey)
-Policing porn mobility (sexting, filming and watching porn in public, Google Glass porn)

Please send abstracts (300 words max), manuscripts (6000-8000 words) with a 200 word bio,
and direct all inquiries to Evangelos Tziallas at evangelostziallas@gmail.com

Abstracts due [rolling]
Manuscripts due [rolling]

Jan 032014
 

porn studies 

This special issue of Porn Studies will promote a discussion about race in the study of pornography. Race remains an underdeveloped area of research in porn studies, and employing racial analytics to the study of pornography’s historical, representational, market, labor, industrial, and technological production is imperative for the field. Race is crucial for the field because it allows us to think through power relations that function in concert with gender, sexuality, and class, to uncover the historical importance of unequal looking relations, labor relations, and access to media authorship, and to reveal the ways in which desire, sexual and otherwise, is inextricably bound to processes of racialization.

A critical racial optic illuminates the interests, desires, and experiences of racialized minorities as they are portrayed in, mobilize, or labor within pornographic fields. This mode of analysis may draw upon the theoretical scholarship of critical race scholars, women of color feminists, and queer of color critique as well as on the emerging field of porn studies scholarship to think through the fantasies, energies, connectivities, pleasures, and power relations embedded in racial pornographies. Another function of a racial optics is to expose the rise of colorblindness or postracial ideologies in popular media discourses and academic theories about pornography, even as race is ever more salient to adult industries in a neoliberal era.

In addition, this special issue of Porn Studies will highlight research that launches pornographics as a framework for examining cultural productions and social relations outside of the genre and industry of pornography. Increasingly, scholars have drawn on pornography as a lens to problematize racial, gender, and sexual discourses, structures, and economies in ways that reveal the utility of pornographics as a mode of cultural inquiry that exceeds the formal confines of adult entertainment industries and networks of particular erotic communities. The goal of this special issue is to read the labor of race in pornography or pornographics, and the labor of pornography or pornographics in race.

Finally, although this is a scholarly journal we welcome essays, interviews, and creative pieces from academics, artists, activists, and adult industry practitioners.

About Porn Studies

New in 2014, Porn Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal, which publishes original research examining specifically sexual and explicit media forms, their connections to wider media landscapes and their links to the broader spheres of (sex) work across historical periods and national contexts.

Topics

Ø  Race or racial minorities in pornographic images

Ø  Race or racial minorities in adult entertainment labor, racialized sex work

Ø  Deployments of racialized discourses in porn or discussions of porn

Ø  Colorblindness and postracial ideologies in porn or discussions of porn

Ø  Race in the production, distribution, or consumption of porn media technologies

Ø  Race or racial minorities in pornographic aesthetics or art

Ø  Racial discourses in antiporn or sex positive feminist approaches to pornography

Ø  Histories of race or racial minorities in pornography or pornographic cultural production

Ø  Ethnopornography and race

Ø  Racial or interracial communities in pornography

Ø  Race in global, transnational, or diasporic pornographies

Ø  Racial fetishism

Ø  Race and disability politics in pornography

Ø  Race and BDSM in pornography

Ø  Queer and feminist approaches to race and racism in pornography

Ø  Racial politics in porn activism, health issues, and legal concerns

Ø  Race and obscenity law, censorship, or free speech issues

Ø  Race and class in access to pornography, circulations of explicit media

Ø  Race in pornographic pop culture, sex tapes, viral videos, animation, and gaming

Ø  Race in feminist pornography, queer pornography, trans pornography, and gay porn

Ø  Race pleasure, racial pain, racial disgust, racial desire and other affective domains

Ø  Radical approaches to race or the methodology of racial studies in pornography

Format

The journal special issue will consist of original articles, book and/or film reviews, conference proceedings, photo essays, and a forum or dialogue based interview essay.

Submission formats:

Ø  Original articles, approximately 6,000-7,000 words in length (including notes)

Ø  Book or film reviews, approximately 1000-2000 words in length (including notes)

Ø  Conference proceedings or Photo Essay, approximately 1200 to 2000 words in length (including notes)

Ø  Forum pieces, Interviews, or Dialogue/Debate essays, approximately 3,000 to 5,000 words in length (including notes)

Style Guidelines:

Manuscripts are accepted in English, OED spelling and punctuation preferred, including use of single quotation marks. Authors should include 1-5 keywords, 150 word abstract, and a short biographical note. Manuscript preparation instructions for Taylor and Francis publications and Routledge journals can be found here: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rprn20&page=instructions#.UpOSA42f8sg

Timeline

Ø  Deadline to Receive Notice of Intent to Submit a Manuscript, 150-200 word Abstract: January 8, 2014

Ø  Deadline to Receive Full Submissions: April 11, 2014

Ø  Expected Publication Date: September 2015

 

Address questions and submissions to:

Dr. Mireille Miller-Young
Department of Feminist Studies
4631 South Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106  USA
Email: mmilleryoung@femst.ucsb.edu

Oct 222013
 

Print
feminist porn
Good for Her, Tristan Taormino, and The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies announced the dates and submission deadlines today for The 2014 Feminist Porn Awards and The 2nd Annual Feminist Porn Conference.

The 9th Annual Feminist Porn Awards will be held April 3 and 4, 2014 in Toronto. The events include a screening of nominated films with directors, producers, and performers in attendance as well as the Feminist Porn Awards Gala at the Capitol Theatre. The Awards have been celebrating diverse sexuality, desire, and ethically produced porn since 2006. They offer audiences an alternative to mainstream porn and access to provocative sexy films that are sometimes not available to a wider audience.

“We’re very excited about receiving this year’s submissions. Every year we have an even more diverse group of films by people of all sexes, genders, bodies and desires to share with our growing audience. We look forward to seeing what expanded feminist expressions of porn look like on screen, and seeing more locally produced films,” says Carlyle Jansen, founder of Good for Her and The Feminist Porn Awards. The deadline for submissions to the Feminist Porn Awards is January 17, 2014.

The 2nd Annual Feminist Porn Conference will take place April 5 and 6, 2014, at the University of Toronto. The deadline to submit presentation proposals is December 23, 2013. The Feminist Porn Conference brings together academics, students, cultural critics, sex workers, activists, fans, performers, directors, and producers to explore the intersections between feminism and pornography as well as feminist porn as a genre, industry, and movement. The conference includes sessions devoted to both academic and non-academic presentations, film screenings, a keynote talk, and networking time. In addition, this year there will be a business track featuring workshops on production and filmmaking, legal issues, marketing and branding, social media, affiliate programs, and web-based technologies.

“I’m thrilled to return to the University of Toronto for the conference. Last year’s event exceeded all my expectations, and I look forward to expanding to two days of programming this year,” says Tristan Taormino, founder and producer of The Feminist Porn Conference. “Plus, with generous support from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, we were able to move to a fully accessible building on campus.”