Brandon Arroyo | Queens College of the City University of New York (original) (raw)
Books by Brandon Arroyo
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019
Articles by Brandon Arroyo
Porn Studies Journal, 2017
An affective analysis of the transmedia persona of YouTube celebrity Chris Crocker.
Porn Studies Journal, 2016
A thought piece on the nightly ritual of scrolling through porn texts in search of the unknown.
Porn Studies Journal, 2016
An affective reading of how networked porn texts work to compose an active pornographic space.
Textual Overtures , 2014
A comparative analysis of sexual contact involving transexual characters.
Online by Brandon Arroyo
Communication, Culture and Critique, 2021
a guest blog for McGill-Queen's University Press
Media Commons, 2013
A brief analysis of the affective intentions behind the U.S. government's broadband policy.
Book Reviews by Brandon Arroyo
Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, 2020
a review of Hollis Griffin's book: Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital Age
Screening Sex, 2017
a review of John Mercer's book: Gay Pornography: Representation of Sexuality and Masculinity
Conference Presentations by Brandon Arroyo
FLOW Conference: Precarity, Preservation & Praxis, 2018
Syllabi by Brandon Arroyo
Porno Cultures Podcast by Brandon Arroyo
Adam joins us to talk about his long career producing music videos, short films, and writing web ... more Adam joins us to talk about his long career producing music videos, short films, and writing web series and blogs where he situates porn at the center of the gay experience. we also talk about how he got the job producing the Netflix hit documentary CIRCUS OF BOOKS
John joins the podcast to talk about his new book: Gay Pornography: Sexuality and Masculinity (2017)
Madita Oeming interviews pornography performer extraordinaire Jiz Lee at the 2019 Berlin Porn Fil... more Madita Oeming interviews pornography performer extraordinaire Jiz Lee at the 2019 Berlin Porn Film Festival
Porno Cultures Podcast host Brandon Arroyo visits the Films(trips) podcast to talk about the porn... more Porno Cultures Podcast host Brandon Arroyo visits the Films(trips) podcast to talk about the porn-adjacent film CRUISING.
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019
Porn Studies Journal, 2017
An affective analysis of the transmedia persona of YouTube celebrity Chris Crocker.
Porn Studies Journal, 2016
A thought piece on the nightly ritual of scrolling through porn texts in search of the unknown.
Porn Studies Journal, 2016
An affective reading of how networked porn texts work to compose an active pornographic space.
Textual Overtures , 2014
A comparative analysis of sexual contact involving transexual characters.
Communication, Culture and Critique, 2021
a guest blog for McGill-Queen's University Press
Media Commons, 2013
A brief analysis of the affective intentions behind the U.S. government's broadband policy.
Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, 2020
a review of Hollis Griffin's book: Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital Age
Screening Sex, 2017
a review of John Mercer's book: Gay Pornography: Representation of Sexuality and Masculinity
FLOW Conference: Precarity, Preservation & Praxis, 2018
Adam joins us to talk about his long career producing music videos, short films, and writing web ... more Adam joins us to talk about his long career producing music videos, short films, and writing web series and blogs where he situates porn at the center of the gay experience. we also talk about how he got the job producing the Netflix hit documentary CIRCUS OF BOOKS
John joins the podcast to talk about his new book: Gay Pornography: Sexuality and Masculinity (2017)
Madita Oeming interviews pornography performer extraordinaire Jiz Lee at the 2019 Berlin Porn Fil... more Madita Oeming interviews pornography performer extraordinaire Jiz Lee at the 2019 Berlin Porn Film Festival
Porno Cultures Podcast host Brandon Arroyo visits the Films(trips) podcast to talk about the porn... more Porno Cultures Podcast host Brandon Arroyo visits the Films(trips) podcast to talk about the porn-adjacent film CRUISING.
Pornography is often talked about as this abstract alien “thing” that has no connection to the re... more Pornography is often talked about as this abstract alien “thing” that has no connection to the real-world experience of any “decent” or “good” person. The thinking goes that since pornography is this anti-feminist and morally damaging abstraction, it must originate from a dark place consumed with hate and misogyny. But what if I told you that, in fact, there’s a whole spectrum of pornography dedicated to paying homage to the most cherished children’s stories and beloved horror classics like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1965), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde (1886), and Dracula (1897)? And how would your opinions of pornographers change if you knew that they loved these books as much as you do? Well, that’s part of the story being told by professor Laura Helen Marks in her book: Alice in Pornoland: Hardcore Encounters with the Victorian Gothic.
This chapter offers a collection of best practices for media scholars and educators who may be co... more This chapter offers a collection of best practices for media scholars and educators who may be considering starting a podcast. Based on a survey of scholars and researchers currently recording and producing their own podcasts, this chapter synthesizes their responses into advice for those interested in participating in this growing medium. These recommendations are organized into six categories: planning ahead for a podcast, gathering the right tools, finding a clear concept, recording, editing, and understanding podcasting as a platform. Together, these best practices offer genera guidelines for the kinds of considerations, challenges, and opportunities that may face individuals or organizations that are considering publishing thier own podcast.
In this episode we explore the wild world of pornographic magazines. Believe it or not, before th... more In this episode we explore the wild world of pornographic magazines. Believe it or not, before the popularization of the internet, a great many people had their first and most lasting encounters with pornography via magazines. Magazines were an essential part of pornographic creation and circulation for many decades, and now that they've fallen victim to the digital revolution, they've only recently been considered as an archival object suited for academic study. In this episode we tackle just a small sliver of pornographic magazine history by talking about a set of magazines addressing queer sexuality.
When we think about the rhetoric around sex workers it's often easier to hear or read opinions ad... more When we think about the rhetoric around sex workers it's often easier to hear or read opinions advocating for the abolishment of sex work coming from politicians or "concerned citizens" who are not sex workers, or have never bothered to speak to a sex worker. The degree to which the voices of sex workers are suppressed in mainstream outlets throughout the West speaks to how dangerous their voices are considered. What on earth can sex workers be saying that so many people feel the need to speak for them instead of letting them speak for themselves? Well, that's one of the primary issues that Nicholas de Villiers looks to solve in Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Sexography analyzes a series of films centered around interviewing sex workers. These films represent some of the few instances where sex workers are actually allowed to speak for themselves. Of course, these films are not without their own tensions. Many of the films are directed by non-sex workers and some of the portrayals of sex work in these films is quite negative. This is where de Villiers' dynamic analysis of these films through a queer perspective helps us think about the nature of sex work, the interview, documentary aesthetics, and the concept of "truth" in new and interesting ways. Sexography is an exploration of how we can go about reading for, and exploring the sexual practices of, not only sex workers, but our own ideas about sexuality as well. How can the financial aspects of sex work help us understand the power dynamics of our own sexual relationships? What can sex workers teach us about sex and pornographic literacy? What is the relationship between sex work, pornography, and drag performance? And how can the work of Foucault help us think about the contemporary nature of sexual practice? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging interview. De Villiers is one of the most interesting and bold queer theorists working today, so you're not going to want to miss out on his compelling analysis of these films or his thoughts on contemporary sexuality!
In this episode, we delve into the seedy and exciting world of sexploitation cinema! Elena Gorfin... more In this episode, we delve into the seedy and exciting world of sexploitation cinema! Elena Gorfinkel’s remarkable new book, Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), is a deep historical and theoretical dive into the legal history, feminist perspective, legal conditions, and critical response to sexploitation films. In this interview we talk about how Kim’s Video in New York City facilitated her interest in sexploitation films, we talk about the Marxist and feminist implications of sexploitation, we consider why film critics of the 1960s were so “bored” watching sexploitation, and we talk about her role as the co-chair of the Adult Film History Special Interest Research Group, which is a part of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. If you’re looking for a primer on the history of sexploitation, you’ve come to the right podcast!
In this episode we explore the legacy of Pat Rocco and try to figure out where he belongs within ... more In this episode we explore the legacy of Pat Rocco and try to figure out where he belongs within pornography’s history. This show features Matthew Hipps, who’s a PhD student in Film Studies at the University of Iowa, and Bryan Wuest, who is a graduate of UCLA’s PhD program in Cinema and Media Studies. Each of them presented papers about Rocco’s films at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in 2018, so I thought it would be great to have them on to talk about the different ways in which they approach his work. This episode has special resonance considering that Rocco would die just seven months after this recording.
In this episode, we're joined one of the most prolific and accomplished scholars in the field of ... more In this episode, we're joined one of the most prolific and accomplished scholars in the field of pornography studies, Susanna Paasonen. She is a professor of media studies at the University of Turku in Finland and has written and edited over eight books covering pornography, sex, internet studies, feminism, and affect. Her newest book is Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play (MIT Press, 2018), where she explores sex, bodily capacities, appetites, orientations, and connections in terms of play and playfulness. Susanna is one of the most innovative porn scholars working today. Her accounting of the affective resonance of pornography moves us beyond the boundaries of traditional scholarship and leads us into the exciting realms of the unknown!
This episode features a recording of a panel from the 2018 Society for Cinema & Media Studies con... more This episode features a recording of a panel from the 2018 Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference in Toronto. It features four academics talking about Canada's porn history and futures. Peter Alilunas talks about the pornographic history of Toronto's Yonyge St. Cait McKilley talks about an underground lesbian feminist porn produced in Toronto in 1984. Nikola Stepic considers gay pornography movies shot in Montreal's Gay Village as a type of visual tourism. And Patrick Keilty describes how Montreal came to be one of the world's porn capitals.
Porn Studies Journal, 2019
The Porno Cultures Podcast was created in 2017 by Brandon Arroyo while finishing his PhD in Film ... more The Porno Cultures Podcast was created in 2017 by Brandon Arroyo while finishing his PhD in Film & Moving Image studies at Concordia University. After being a fan of podcasts for years, Brandon became frustrated that there were hardly any shows featuring the authors or ideas that he became familiar with while writing a dissertation centred on pornography studies. So, he decided to start his own show featuring academics writing about pornography. The podcast also includes performers, directors, bloggers, and playwrights who are helping us think about pornography within our culture in new and interesting ways. This is the podcast where we think about pornography rather than react to it. This is a partial transcript from an episode featuring four up-and-coming graduate students and recently minted PhDs talking about their experience working on pornography studies while in graduate school. The guests include John Paul Stadler, PhD in Literature with a certificate in feminist studies from Duke University, Darshana Mini, a PhD candidate in Cinema and Madia studies at the University of Southern California, Ben Strassfeld, PhD in Screen Arts & Cultures from the University of Michigan, and Madita Oeming, a PhD candidate in American Studies from the University of Paderbon in Germany. This conversation took place at the 2018 edition of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Toronto, Canada. To listen to more episodes and find out more about the podcast, check out the website (pornoculture.podomatic.com).
This episode is our first grad student roundtable where up-and-coming porn scholars talk about th... more This episode is our first grad student roundtable where up-and-coming porn scholars talk about their experience studying pornography in grad school. Our guests include: John Paul Stadler of Duke University, Darshana Sreedhar Mini of the University of Southern California, Ben Strassfeld from the University of Michigan, and Madita Oeming of Paderborn University in Germany.
Professor Lynn Comella joins us to talk about her books New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Poli... more Professor Lynn Comella joins us to talk about her books New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law (co-edited with Shira Tarrant, 2015) and Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure (2017). The reach of Vibrator Nation’s readership has extended beyond the typical academic circles and has resonated with a mainstream audience due to its easy reading style, and because it details a history of feminist sex shops that the public was obviously eager to read about. The history of these shops is a fascinating one, and one that has literally changed the ways in which we think about the female orgasm within our post-sexual revolution era. The story of these stores isn’t one of capitalist opportunism, it’s actually a story about revolutionary feminist sexual educators who wanted to spread their sexual knowledge to a starving female public looking for ways to expand their sexual pleasure. In short, our understanding of sexual history would be incomplete without the information contained in this book. Pornography also has a role to play in this history. We talk about how pornography worked its way into these sex shops after owners long resisted their inclusion. And we also talk about the movies produced by the legendary San Francisco sex shop Good Vibrations. This is a history that you’re not going to want to miss!
While porn studies delve into history and theory books in order to legitimize its position within... more While porn studies delve into history and theory books in order to legitimize its position within academia, scholars can often times lose track of the most essential voices that offer us an important perspective on the industry, those of the porn performers themselves! In this episode, I talk with gay porn performer Chris Harder. Harder’s journey through the industry is an interesting one mostly due to the fact that he comes from a theater background. He studied theater and queer theory while going to school in North Dakota, so his porn performances reflect a journey of a young man coming to the big city who documents his sexual awakening via his onscreen performances. However, theatrical ambitions were not stifled by his porn career. In this interview, we talk about his one-man show that he wrote and stars in titled: Porn to be a Star. The show is a hilarious romp where he plays various fictional characters that reflect on his journey growing up in the Dakota plains, moving to the big city, and discovering a new side of himself by performing in porn. Harder is also one of the world’s leading boylesque performers. He teaches classes teaching people how to perform for burlesque theater and has traveled the world performing his act. In this interview we talk about how his burlesque work is intertwined with is porn performance, how is sexual inspirations influence his work, and how the queer theory that he learned in school still influences his work to this day. Harder is one of the kindest and funniest personalities in the industry, and I think that comes across well in this interview.
Zachary Sire is the editor of the essential gay porn blog Str8UpGayPorn. Str8UpGayPorn is the pri... more Zachary Sire is the editor of the essential gay porn blog Str8UpGayPorn. Str8UpGayPorn is the primary news and gossip site of the gay porn industry. If you’re a porn star and you’ve done something naughty, it’s likely to become a headline on the site sooner rather than later. Zachary started out as a features writer for magazines like Unzipped, Men and Freshmen before becoming a blogger for TheSword in 2010. It’s during his tenure at TheSword where he made a name for himself and became perhaps became the industry’s most notable personality who has never taken off his clothing in front of a camera! His humorous wit, coupled with is biting sarcasm, make his takedowns of hypocritical politicians, racist performers, and reckless studio bosses equally funny and informative. In 2013 he left TheSword to start his own blog about the industry, Str8UpGayPorn. Str8UpGayPorn’s layout intentionally mimics (and mocks) one of the internet’s most well-known sites, TheDrudgeReport. And just like Drudge, Str8UpGayPorn emphasizes how the gossip around gay pornography interacts with our wider pop-cultural world by providing links to news stories related to the pornographic focus of the site. By doing this, Zachary makes the intersection of porn and pop culture evident. In this interview we talk about his rise through the industry, he explains how one of his blog posts was taken down as a result of business pressure, the state of racial diversity within the industry, and we recap highlights from the first-ever Str8UpGayPorn Awards, which took place in June of 2017 in New York City.
Ashley West is the host of the most successful porn podcast of them all, The Rialto Report. The R... more Ashley West is the host of the most successful porn podcast of them all, The Rialto Report. The Rialto Report explores the history of the “golden age” of porn in the 1960s, 70s & 80s by interviewing the actors, directors, producers, and distributors from that era. The most remarkable aspect of the show is his amazing ability to find these long-lost people, some of whom haven’t spoken publicly in over 40 years! He gets them to not only talk about their time in the industry, but their childhood, their love life, their adventures and their passions outside of porn. In this way, Ashley paints a broad picture of these people’s lives and reveals their human complexity that shows them as typical people rather than as criminal or sadistic smut-peddlers that anti-porn activists make them out to be. In this interview we talk about his childhood growing up in Italy, and how sexploitation and pornographic movies were shown and written about in the same theaters and magazines as mainstream movies. We talk about his first porn crush, his interview style, why he keeps his identity a secret, and his work as a consultant on the HBO show The Duce. We also get into this concerns about the academic work being done on pornography and his worries that academia is being too insulated in terms of not making enough of an effort to get its work out to the public. Ashely has only done two interviews to celebrate The Rialto Report’s 5-year anniversary, so you’re not going to want to miss this rare opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes peek into how the podcast comes together.
Professor Rebecca Sullivan joins us to talk about her role as the chair of the steering committee... more Professor Rebecca Sullivan joins us to talk about her role as the chair of the steering committee for the Sexuality Studies Association of Canada, and her book on the infamous second-wave feminist anti-porn documentary Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography (1982). The film is directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein, a feminist filmmaker who was an important part of the National Film Board’s Studio D, a project focused on providing female directors the chance to make their own documentaries. The film is co-directed by stripper/activist Lindalee Tracey. And while the film seemed to have started out with the intention of being a progressive analysis of feminist sexual exploration, it eventually turned into the iconic anti-porn landmark that we know it as today. Over the last couple of decades, the film has been lambasted within porn studies circles due to its uncritical adoption of the views of anti-porn feminists like Susan Griffin and Robin Morgan. Interestingly, pornography/feminist scholar Rebecca Sullivan’s book: Bonnie Sherr Klein’s “Not a Love Story” (2014) is a reparative reading of the film that argues that in fact, the documentary’s importance is in offering a platform for sex workers to speak in their own voice throughout the film. While the film is best remembered for its anti-porn second half, Sullivan’s extensive interviews with Klein herself reveal an original intention to give voice and respect to the marginalized sex worker. And ultimately, Sullivan’s book is a cautionary tale of how a director’s intentions can radically change once the footage is turned over to an editor. This is a bold argument to make considering how much bad will the film has garnered over the years from sex-positive feminists. And in this interview, Professor Sullivan answers all the tough questions we ask regarding her alternative reading of the film. It’s a very enlightening conversation!
You can watch Not a Love Story on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRNWU2Y-Q0c
More info about Bonnie Sherr Klein’s “Not a Love Story”: https://utorontopress.com/us/blog/tag/rebecca-sullivan/
More info about Rebecca Sullivan: https://english.ucalgary.ca/profiles/rebecca-sullivan
Editorial written by Sullivan titled: “Porn is a Part of Our Culture. Why Shouldn’t Universities Study it?”: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/porn-is-a-part-of-our-culture-shouldnt-universities-study-it/article17766283/
“The Evolution of Porn Studies”: https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/evolution-porn-studies/
Info about Sullivan’s book with Alan McKee: Pornography: Structures, Agency and Performance (2015):
https://www.amazon.ca/Pornography-Structures-Performance-Rebecca-Sullivan/dp/0745651941
pornocultures.podomatic.com
facebook.com/AcademicSex
@PornoCultures
Professor David Church joins us to talk about his newest book Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornog... more Professor David Church joins us to talk about his newest book Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornography and the Material Legacies of Adult Cinema (2016). His approach to pornography produced in the age when moving image technology was just emerging to the beginning of the “porno chic” era, is unique in the sense that he writes about how these older texts are consumed, admired, and fetishized within our contemporary mediascape. He does this by analyzing the affective resonance that these texts take on as they circulate via digital platforms today. This is a compelling way to think about porn’s history, and I think it could become a model for the way future historians go about formulating media histories as they are experienced today. In this interview, David talks to us about the role nostalgia plays in our erotic imagination, how our understanding of pornography changes when it transforms from being an object of erotic stimulation to a historical text, and explains cinephilia’s connection to necrophilia.
More information about Disposable Passions can be found here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/disposable-passions-9781501307539/
More of Professor Church’s writing can be found here:
https://nau.academia.edu/DavidChurch
Some online sites where you can find vintage texts:
http://retrovintageerotica.com/
http://www.theclassicporn.com/