“For more than a decade now, Linda Williams has been taking porn seriously. Her latest-Porn Studies-does not disappoint. She succeeds, once again, in legitimizing porn as an essential topic for academic study and provides a guide for teaching about it. For all those who want to know more about the place of porn in American culture, this is refreshingly unabashed scholarship.”--Susie Bright, author of Mommy's Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn, and Cherry Pie “Thank God for Linda Williams! She is absolutely brilliant. I have learned an enormous amount from her over the years. She boldly goes where few academics dare. Porn Studies is a smart, much needed, fascinating book, which paves the way and sets the tone for future porn studies. This book boggles and blows my mind.”-Annie Sprinkle, postmodern pornographer and sexologist"With Porn Studies, Williams and her contributors have opened a door-they've made it possible for intelligent people to discuss porn in more or less polite company. This accomplishment alone is worth celebrating. I look forward to what comes next in the field." - Annalee Newitz (Cineaste) "The anthology's 16 essays . . . deliciously, disturbingly blur the traditionally solid line between the intellectual and the sexual, and that's part of the point. . . . These essays courageously suggest that there is great pleasure in exploring the spaces between polemics and sensationalism." - Maria Elena Buszek (Bust) "The tone is sensible, even as some wonderfully sensational material is covered. . . . There are also some excellent histories here. . . . The book will certainly help 'the teacher and student of pornography roll up their sleeves to begin work in this field', mitigating porn's image as mainstream culture's guilty secret" - Linda Ruth Williams (Sight & Sound) "This collection of very accessible and fascinating essays links pornography to the avant-garde and modern sex scandals, tracing its roots from early stag films and making a connection between war machinery and the pinup girls of WWII." (Ms.)
