Princeton university to offer spring course on global sex work, strippers, and 'whore stigma'

PRINCETON, N.J. — Princeton University’s Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) program will offer a controversial new course this spring titled “Power, Profit and Pleasure: Sex Workers and Sex Work,” exploring the complexities and global dynamics of sex work through academic and social lenses.

According to the university’s course catalog, the class will be taught by Anne McClintock and will examine sex work across various forms, including pornography, prostitution, erotic dance, escorting, camming, commercial fetishism, street work, and sex tourism. The syllabus is designed to present sex work narratives from the perspectives of sex workers themselves, highlighting themes such as race, class, queer dynamics, and labor.

“McClintock is the author of the acclaimed book Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1995) among other texts. Imperial Leather has been translated into Portuguese as Couro Imperial – Raça, Gênero E Sexualidade No Embate (2018, second edition, 2019). McClintock has also written three monographs: Simone de Beauvoir (Scribners), Olive Schreiner (Scribners), and Double Crossings: Madness, Sexuality and Imperialism (2001). She co-edited Dangerous Liaisons. Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives (1995) with Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat. She also co-edited Queer Transexions of Race, Nation and Gender (1997) with Jose Esteban Munos and Philip Harper; and edited Sex Workers and Sex Work (1995). McClintock has three books in progress: Unquiet Ghosts. From the Forever War to Climate Chaos (Duke U.P Trade Series); Skin Hunger. A Chronicle of Pleasure, Power and Profit (Jonathan Cape); and Planet of Intimate Trespass (Routledge),” he bio page on the University’s website reads.

“This course raises some of the most fascinating, controversial, and often taboo questions of our time,” the course description reads, with topics ranging from the “whore stigma” and technologies of desire to legal frameworks, carceral systems, and strategies for social transformation.

The class is part of the university’s broader effort to engage with challenging social topics through interdisciplinary study. It also features discussions on the intersection of sex work with marriage, monogamy, and societal perceptions of “dirt” and morality.

Princeton’s GSS program will also offer additional courses focusing on topics like “queer spaces” and other gender and sexuality-related subjects in the upcoming semester.

The course reflects ongoing academic debates around the complexities of sex work as both a labor issue and a site of cultural stigma, sparking broader conversations about representation, agency, and systems of power.

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