Network participants

Katharine Jenkins, University of Nottingham (Philosophy). Katharine works in various areas of social philosophy including social ontology and the philosophy of sex and sexuality. She is particularly interested in the role of categories in structuring sexual experiences and attitudes (e.g. categories of gender, categories of sexual orientation). She has written on pornography and the social construction of women, on the epistemic dimensions of rape myths, and on Andrea Dworkin’s philosophy of sex.

Hans Maes, University of Kent (History of Art, network co-ordinator). Hans has authored numerous essays, book chapters, reference articles on the relation and difference between erotic art and pornography and on the aesthetics and ethics of sexiness. He is co-editor of Art and Pornography: Philosophical Essays (OUP, 2012) and editor of Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography (Palgrave, 2013).

Brett Mills, University of East Anglia (Film, Television and Media Studies). Brett’s research currently focuses on the representations of animals on television, across a wide range of genres, but particularly in wildlife documentaries. This has focussed on issues of animal privacy, and the differences between the kinds of representations allowable for humans as opposed to those for other species. It has also explored representations of animal sexuality, arguing that heteronormative discourses confine such representations, which not only ignore a range of animal sexual behaviour, but also function to ‘naturalise’ particular kinds of human sexual behaviour.

James Robson, Open University (Classical Studies) James works on sex and sexuality in the ancient Greek world, focusing on areas such as sex appeal, sexual fantasy, sexual assault, same-sex relationships and prostitution (both male and female) in classical Athens. He is particularly interested in the prevalence of female prostitutes as sexual fantasy figures in both comic drama and vase paintings and the ways in which these women are discussed and represented.

Kathleen Stock, University of Sussex (Philosophy, network co-ordinator). Kathleen has written on the relationship between watching pornography and imagining about oneself; and on the nature of objectification, sexual or otherwise. She’s generally interested in the relations between imagination and fiction, and has a monograph on the topic forthcoming with OUP in 2017.

Ellen Wright, De Montfort University (Television and Cinema History). Ellen’s work tends to focus on representations of gender and sexuality in the material culture surrounding Hollywood cinema between 1930 and 1950. She explores debates around taste, class, nationality and consumption using denigrated and borderline or explicit materials.

Sexual Attitudes to the Real and the Virtual