Methods for Adult Media Studies

This chapter explores the various research methods employed by scholars of adult film and media. As a nascent and interdisciplinary field, adult film and media researchers come from disparate disciplines and employ various methodologies, often in provocative combinations. This chapter begins with a summary of the emergence of the first academic texts about pornography from the discipline of film studies and the ensuing reliance on visual analysis or close reading, then explores other works that emerged out of history, film history, and sociology that utilize archival research and ethnographic methods, such as interviews and participant observation. The chapter introduces readers to some of the most influential scholars and texts in the field, and details methods for the study of film and video, periodicals, live theatre, and sex shops. Works covered include meditations on affect and form, readings of race and class, industry studies, studies of labor, and histories of various media formats. The purview of adult media studies is vast and its objects diverse; this chapter suggests that its method might in fact be methodological promiscuity.