Porn Studies

A collection of contemporary work on pornographic film and video, edited by one of the founders of the field Moves beyond futile feminist debates and distinctions between a "good" erotica and a "bad" hard core In Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible", Linda Williams put moving-image pornography on the map of contemporary scholarship with her path-breaking analysis of the most popular and enduring of all film and video genres.

Now, fifteen years later, she showcases the next generation of critical thinking about pornography and signals new directions for study and teaching.Porn Studies resists the tendency to situate pornography as the outer limit of what can be studied and discussed.

It moves beyond futile feminist debates and distinctions between a "good" erotica and a "bad" hard core.

With revenues totaling between ten and fourteen billion dollars annually - more than the combined revenues of professional American football, basketball, and baseball - this volume acknowledges that visual, hard-core pornography has emphatically arrived as a central feature of American popular culture.