128110 VO Cultural Studies - MA M01 (2017S)

“Screening Pleasure” aims at presenting ways to study and analyze discursive constructions and representations of eroticism and sexual pleasure across media and history. With a particular focus on contemporary popular culture and approaches to pornography from a feminist perspective, the lecture series will cover such diverse topics as the genesis of academic porn studies, approaches towards erotic life writing, diachronic analyses of pornographic iconography, the ‘feminist sex wars’, hegemonic and subversive sexualities in different media, the depiction of non-normative sex in popular culture, the affective and spatial politics of porn as well as analyses of the multifarious genres of porn and eroticism with their own pornographic gazes and diverse audiences.

The lecture series is serious, like Linda Williams’ seminal Porn Studies, about including “the critical and historical study of pornography in the academic curriculum”, which is “the study of pornography as a cultural form—not just as a legal or sociological issue” (“Porn Studies” 5). Spanning from Pompeii’s erotic frescos to the current debate on society’s ‘pornification,’ the series of diverse and yet thematically connected lectures will deconstruct common understandings of pornography by tracing the historical genealogy of the term and highlighting its cultural contingency at different points in time.

Students will be provided with a theoretical and methodological toolkit for understanding and examining topics related to pornography and the construction of pleasure and sexuality. The diverse talks will critically engage with historical as well as topical debates and provide students with an overview of the most important (theoretical) discourses in the interdisciplinary field of sexuality studies. By looking at discourses of ‘sexualisation’ and sexual empowerment, of gendered representations of sexual desire and of different discrimination practices (gender, age, ‘race’, sexual orientation, class, etc.) the lecture series will familiarize students with an intersectional awareness of different critical aspects of the consumption and interpretation of erotic media in an academic context.

07.03. Andrea Braidt (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
“Porn Studies: A Feminist Project”

14.03. Michaela Lindinger (Wien Museum)
“The Porn Capital: From the 'Viennese Sujets' to Hedy Lamarr. Vienna Porn Production 1870-1930”

21.03. Dieter Fuchs (University of Vienna)
“Mighty Aphrodite’: Pornography in Ancient Greece and Rome”

28.03. Sandra Mayer (University of Vienna)
“‘My Secret Life’: Victorian Erotic Memoir as Life Writing Genre.”

04.04. Elisabeth Lechner (University of Vienna)
“Discussing the Complexities of ‘Disgusting’ Sex in Lena Dunham’s Girls”

25.04. Eugenie Maria Theuer (University of Barcelona/University of Vienna)
“Definitely Not in Kansas Anymore: (Re)Appropriation, Affirmation and Subversion in Porn Parodies”

02.05. Sabine Harrer (University of Vienna)
“Vulvas on the Tablet: What Making Cunt Touch This Has Taught Us About Pleasure and Shame in Digital Gaming”

09.05. Iris Gemeinböck (University of Vienna)
“Literature(s) of Pleasure: Erotic Imaginations between Hegemony and Liberation”

16.05. Clarissa Smith (University of Sunderland)
“Talking about Pornography in Everyday Life: What Can Be Learned from Talking to Audiences”

23.05. Timo Frühwirth (University of Vienna)
“Pornography and the Politics of Space”

30.05. Alexandra Ganser (University of Vienna)
“Porn without Sex: Ruin, Torture, Real Estate and the Proliferation of the Pornographic Gaze”

13.06. Course Recap

20.06. Linda Williams (University of California, Berkeley)
“On the Academic Pleasures of Screening Sex”
(venue: Prospekthof, Atelierhaus, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

27.06. Exam

Please note that there will be no classes on 11 April, 18 April and 6 June!