Porn Studies; first double issue free online until 31 May 2014: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprn20/current#.UzlWDa1dW3k Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) publish the first double issue of Porn Studies, the premier dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal tocritically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts. Porn Studies is edited by Professor Feona Attwood of Middlesex University and Professor Clarissa Smith of the University of Sunderland and supported by an international editorial board. Finally we have a journal that brings together the urgently needed research, theories, and debates to make sense of an important aspect of social and cultural life. The breadth, depth, and richness of its packed first issue confirms its promise as a platform, not only for understanding pornography - but as 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. Gerard Goggin, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Sydney, Australia A scholarly journal about pornography is long overdue. Porn studies has matured into a vibrant and flourishing field, and the kind of solid, carefully researched work that is now available will help to counter the ill-informed and inflamed rhetoric that the topic seems to attract. Gayle Rubin, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, US Porn Studies is the first peer-reviewed journal to take an evidence-based approach to the controversial area of pornography, gender and culture. Its editors are internationally recognized researchers who bring a creative and critical eye to the field. Catharine Lumby, Professor of Media, Macquarie University, Australia A journal dedicated to porn studies is long overdue and most welcome. One of the things it is most important to take seriously is what is taken for pleasure, and Porn Studies will provide the needed critical forum for doing so. Steve Jones, Distinguished Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago, US Porn Studies will play an important role in encouraging deeper, more considered critical thinking about an incredibly complex and widely misunderstood cultural phenomenon. At a time when simplistic discourses circulate around pornography, often occupying binary positions between ‘pro’ and ‘anti’, ‘sex positive’ and ‘sex negative’, serious studies of this area have become increasingly necessary. Analyses of such diverse topics as education, genres, distribution, and ‘effects’ converge in this interdisciplinary academic journal, which both looks backwards to explore the history of porn studies, and suggests a range of ways in which this provocative new area can move forwards. Will Brooker, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies Kingston University, UK and Amy E Forrest, University of Birmingham, UK Porn Studies, the new journal, provides a strong interdisciplinary platform for the critical and level-headed interrogation of an important field of re/presentation that pervades every day life in many forms and the cultural imagination. The unremitting glut of images, fuelled by technological advances and carried by established and emergent media platforms including social media, places an urgency on how imageries in/form subjectivisation and what role pornographic re/presentations play in this process: across cultures, territories and times. Bringing into a productive dialogue a wide range of existing and new voices and perspectives, Porn Studies will shape the future understanding of the production and consumption, dynamics and impact of pornography. Kerstin Mey, Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory, Westminster University, UK Porn Studies is a long overdue scholarly response to one of the world's major culture industries Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University, US As a feminist of a certain age, porn has never been an easy topic for me, neither in personal, nor in research or political terms. Porn Studies takes such a predicament seriously and promises not only to demonstrate the wide variety of opinions and theories about porn, but also to present sound empirical and historical research about the meanings of porn for different kinds of consumers in different contexts. Liesbet van Zoonen, Professor of Media and Communication, Loughborough University, UK As may be more common than we like to think, pornography leads the way for the rest of the media. It's a serial innovator. Now Porn Studies does the same for media studies. I welcome it the more because it is a beacon of good scholarship. Just look at the first issue to discover a template for media research at its best. It is international in scope. It brings together a fine interdisciplinary team of scholars and industry figures at all stages of their careers. It conducts valuable methodological conversations while addressing significant research questions. Crucially, it seeks to explain pornography in use, without falling for one prejudged approach or school of thought. Here is where economics and culture, production and consumption, practice and ideology, history and technology intersect, revealingly, in lively colloquy that advances knowledge. John Hartley, Professor of Cultural Science, Curtin University, Australia One of the oldest cultural practices in the world has finally got an academic journal. Here at last is an arena for serious discussion and critical debate. John Storey, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, UK Articles by leading scholars identify some of the leading themes in pornography research today: Utilising data from more than 5000 responses to an online questionnaire, Martin Barker’s ‘The “Problem” of Sexual Fantasies’ explores understandings of the relations between pornography and sexual imaginaries. Fears about what children might be learning from pornography have been centre stage for some time, in ‘Porn and Sex Education, Porn as Sex Education’, Kath Albury addresses those concerns and their intersections with other issues around young people’s sexual practices, sexual self-representation and sexual knowledge. In ‘Studying Porn Cultures’ Lynn Comella suggests a ‘porn studies-in-action’ and exhorts researchers to ‘leave the confines of our offices, and spend time in the places where pornography is made, distributed and consumed, discussed and debated, taught and adjudicated’. Read these and more free online until 31 May 2014. A selection of call for papers for issues of Porn Studies can be found here: http://bit.ly/rprncfp **************************************************************** ACS List signoff instructions, and other important stuff: http://listserv.uta.fi/archives/acs.html ****************************************************************