Abstract

Academic journals don't usually grab popular media attention. However, the press release announcing the launch of Porn Studies attracted a great deal of interest across the media in summer 2013. On balance, the announcement of the journal's launch was largely positive. There were, of course, attempts to poke fun at the silliness of academic investigations of pornography in keeping with the perennial accusations of the superficiality of media studies, as well as more negative coverage questioning the need for a publication of this kind. How, then, to introduce this first issue of a journal that has already garnered more news interest prior to its launch than most academic publications receive over decades? We want to start out with a statement of why we think a journal in porn studies is needed and what we hope Porn Studies will become.