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The Intellect Handbook of Adult Film and Media collects 36 chapters in six broad sections related to the study of adult film and media: History; Methodologies and Pedagogies; Representations; Production, Spectatorship, and Distribution; Area Studies and Transnationalism; and Law, Health, Policy, and the State. These chapters offer a survey of the discipline, with overviews of the primary literature, important histories, and essential arguments. The Handbook is designed as a reference work and resource for emerging scholars and educators teaching undergraduate courses on film, media, gender, sexuality, or porn studies.
This handbook fills an important gap within cinema and media studies by examining sexually explicit media content and the context for its circulation, production, consumption, and broader reception. Through these essays and the extensive body of literature they engage with, it aims to support the continued growth of adult film and media studies.
“This outstandingly rich and wide-ranging collection with many key voices in adult film and media studies highlights the significance of an often misunderstood and maligned arena of media production, unravelling its complex histories and contemporary manifestations with clarity and precision. In its diverse explorations of adult media, from early stag films to online porn, it tracks production, exhibition, and circulation, labour networks, representation, regulation, and expanding global forms––making for a terrific teaching resource. These illuminating and inspiring essays provide an essential and timely tool kit for understanding sexually explicit media in the twenty-first century.”
— Elena Gorfinkel, author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s and reader in film studies, King’s College London
Peter Alilunas is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video (2016, University of California Press). His work has appeared in Film History; Camera Obscura; Television and New Media; JCMS; and Porn Studies, where he is a member of the editorial board. He is the co-editor with Whitney Strub of ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay (2023, Edinburgh University Press, 2023), and the co-editor of Screening Adult Cinema (2025, Routledge), with Desiree Embree and Finley Freibert.
Patrick Keilty is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. His research interests include the politics of digital infrastructures in the sex industries, adult film, and the materiality of sexual media. His writing and editorial work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies; Information Society; Journal of Documentation; Porn Studies; Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; Scholar and Feminist Online; Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader (Litwin Books, 2013); Uncertain Archives (MIT Press, 2021); Queer Data Studies (University of Washington Press, 2023); and elsewhere.
Darshana Sreedhar Mini is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (UC Press,2024) and co-editor ofSouth Asian Pornographies: Vernacular Formations of the Permissibleand the Obscene (Routledge, 2024).
1. History of Early Adult Film – David Church
2. Adult Movies and Small Gauge Films – Dan Erdman
3. Producing Sexploitation: Two Case Studies – Eric Schaefer
4. The Golden Age – Laura Helen Marks
5. Adult Movies Theaters – Whitney Strub
6. The Boob Tube: Tracking Pornhub’s Emergence – Becky Holt
7. Theories of Sex, Sexuality, and Historiography in Adult Film History – Brandon Arroyo
8. Methods for Adult Film Studies – Daniel Laurin
9. Porn and Sex Education: Realism, Patriarchy, and the Orgasm Gap – Alan McKee, Emma Phillips, Pavla Nováková
10. The Teacher: A Conversation with Constance Penley – Peter Alilunas
11. An Archive of Pornographies & The Pornography of ‘The Archive’ – B.M. Watson
12. Fantasy: Genre Conventions, Political Correctness, and Queer and Feminist Representational Strategies in the Erotic Film – Nikola Stepić
14. History of U.S. Trans Pornography – Sophie Pezzutto
15. An Interview with Ariane Cruz – Marilia Kaisar
16. Latinxxx Pornography – Yessica Garcia Hernandez
17. "Organic, Fair Trade": The Politics of Feminist Pornography' – Jennifer Moorman
18. Gay Pornography – Nguyễn Tân Hoàng
19. Flaunting, Flourishing, and Fucking: The Pleasures and Politics of Queercrip Porn – Loree Erickson
20. Asian American Representations in Pornography – Shawn Suyong Yi Jones
21. Adult Film Labor – Kevin John Bozelka
22. Sex Stores – Lynn Comella
23. Pornography Platforms – Maggie MacDonald
24. Webcamming – Hanne Stegeman
25. The Internet is for Porn – Patrick Keilty
26. In a Sea of Dicks: On the Limits of Porn – Susanna Paasonen
27. The Porn-Brokers: Transnational Entrepreneurship in Western Europe’s Pornography Trade – Oliver Carter
28. Pornography in Southeast Asia: Issues, Challenges, and Possibilities – Ruepert Jiel Dionisio Cao
29. Pornography in Latin America – Victoria Ruétalo, Ana Paula Magalhães Da Silva
30. Porn in/and Africa – Jordache A. Ellapen
31. South Asian Pornographies – Darshana Sreedhar Mini, Anirban Baishya
32. East Asian Pornographies and Conversation Pieces at the Hong Kong Porn Seminar – Katrien Jacobs
33. Regulating Pornography – Brenda Cossman
34. Porn Health: Occupational and Community Approaches – Val Webber
35. Feminism and Pornography – Carolyn Bronstein
36. Porn Panics – Rebecca Sullivan
Contributor Biographies
Index