Our music is taken from the song “Pourquoi je pas?”, and is kindly provided by Chocolat Billy, a band based in Bordeaux, France. To find out more about them, visit their pages on Bandcamp, Facebook and the Free Music Archive.
Heather Berg is assistant professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
Her research explores topics including sex, work, and social struggle. As an ethnographer, she loves talking to working people about how they get by and how they push back. She uses gender and sexuality theory to provide a distinctive take on labor studies, asking feminist and queer questions about identity, power, and political economy.
At Washington University, she teaches courses such as Sexuality and the State, Everyday Unruliness: Feminist and Queer Resistance, Sex and Money, Feminist Theory, and Feminist Research Methods.
Further details:
Personal website
Washington University in St Louis biography
Twitter
EPISODE RESOURCES
Sex Work as (Anti)Work: On Heather Berg’s “Porn Work”
by Scott W. Stern
Los Angeles Review of Books
‘Pleasure and Tedium’: What Porn Reveals About the Future of Work
by Tracy Clark-Flory
Jezebel
Against Everyone with Conner Habib, Episode 147: Heather Berg On Porn Work (Podcast)
The Problem With Sex Work Is Work: Conner Habib & Dr. Heather Berg in Conversation
Merry Jane
Nostalgia Trap, Episode 136: Seizing the Means of (Porn) Production (Podcast)
Common Myths About Porn, Debunked by a Porn Performer
by Dominique Sisley
Vice
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
by Studs Terkel
The New Press
Porn Workers as Labor Force
by Thomas Kilkauer and Meg Young
CounterPunch
What It’s Really Like to Be an OnlyFans Performer
by Ariel Anderssen
Areo
FOSTA-SESTA was supposed to thwart sex trafficking. Instead, it’s sparked a movement
by Liz Tung
WHYY
Sex Work and Stigma
by Jemma Keleher
The Wake
Listen to sex workers – you’ll realise we have a lot to say about labour rights
by Jane Green
The Guardian
Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics
by Cathy J. Cohen
Cambridge University Press
by Anna North
Vox
Stoya on Ethics, Porn, and Workers’ Rights
by Stoya
Vice
Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights`
by Juno Mac and Molly Smith
Verso
“Ethical Porn” Starts When We Pay for It
by Jiz Lee
Jizlee.com
Sex workers blame Bella Thorne for changes at OnlyFans that harm their income
by Doha Madani et al.
NBC News
The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries
by Kathi Weeks
Duke University Press
Sex work is work. That’s the problem … and the key
by Amaranta Heredia Jaén
Eurozine
Eradicating sexual exploitation in porn should not be at the expense of sex workers
by Rebecca Sullivan et al.
The Conversation
Feminism and Sex Work: Decriminalisation
by Elizabeth Rao
YWCA Scotland
Invisible: Sex Work and Mutual Aid During COVID-19
by Molly Simmons
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
The diverse economies of online pornography: From paranoid readings to post-capitalist futures
by Eleanor Wilkinson
Sexualities
MORE BY HEATHER BERG
Porn Work Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism
University of North Carolina Press
Reading Sex Work (Editor/Introduction)
South Atlantic Quarterly
Porn, Work, Place: Beyond the (Set) Shop Floor
Harvard Design Magazine.
A Scene is Just a Marketing Tool: Alternative Income Streams in Porn’s Gig Economy
Porn Studies
Porn Work, Independent Contractor Misclassification, and the Limits of the Law
Columbia Human Rights Law Review
Business as Usual
Jacobin
Porn Work, Feminist Critique, and the Market for Authenticity
Signs
Left of #MeToo
Feminist Studies
An Honest Day’s Wage for a Dishonest Day’s Work: (Re)Productivism and Refusal
Women’s Studies Quarterly
Sex and Money After the Future in Come Closer: The Biennale Reader, Vít Havránek and Tereza Stejskalová (eds.)
Sternberg Press
Intimate Labor in Porn Work, in Nancy L. Fischer et al (eds.), Introducing the New Sexuality Studies (Third Edition), Routledge
Workers and Publics
Porn Studies
Laboring Porn Studies
Porn Studies
Creative Precarity in the Adult Film Industry, with Constance Penley, in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson (eds.)
University of California Press
Sex, Work, Queerly: Identity, Authenticity and Laboured Performance in Queer Sex Work, Mary Laing et al. (eds.)
Routledge
Trafficking Policy, Meaning Making and State Violence
Social Policy & Society
Working for Love, Loving for Work: Discourses of Labor in Feminist Sex-Work Activism
Feminist Studies
Katha Pollitt’s Quality Control
Jacobin
Protecting Virtue, Erasing Labor: Historical Responses to Trafficking, with Eileen Boris, in Human Trafficking Reconsidered, Kimberly Kay Hoang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (eds.)
IDEBATE Press