Digital archives and the history of pornography

Teen Pornography: An Emerging Mental Health Challenge

“…The word pornography was coined from 3 Greek words ( porne meaning “prostitute,” graphein which refers to the “act of recording or writing,” derived meaning is “illustration” and ia meaning “a state of” or “a property of”), which together means the illustration or description of prostitutes or prostitution. 5 French literature has some of the earliest mentions in the 1800s of the word “ pornographia .” 6, 7 It was then used in the English language to refer to include all forms of “non-offensive and bookish terms for describing prostitutes” and later on encompassed the more modern connotation of “any form of objectionable material in art and literature.” 6, 7 In the modern day and age, there have been interdisciplinary disagreements between the usage of the word porn and defining it. A Delphi panel has recently published 2 agreed forms of defining pornography, one of which is “ sexually explicit materials intended to arouse .” 8…”

Circumcision Debates in Sexology Magazine (1934–1975)

“…Magazines about sexuality, including pornography, have a long and complicated history in the archive. Indeed, Bull (2014) rightly notes that "one of the most significant challenges that historians of pornography face is locating and accessing sufficient primary material" (p. 402). The periodical I am considering here would hardly be considered pornography, even by the most conservative of critics.…”

When celluloid pornography went digital: class and race in the Bangladeshi cut-piece online

“…Finally, the cut-pieces, pornographic ephemera even when they were blossoming in Bangladesh at the turn of the century, have paradoxically come to find their archive outside of their native habitat of exhibition and circulation. It is as digital clips that they have come to be archived, not unlike the vast domain of South Asian screen culture that falls between the gaps of legal, formal and respectable archives and repositories (Bull 2014;Mini 2016).…”