What is Susanna Paasonen reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Susanna Paasonen, author of Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography.

Her entry begins:

Currently, I'm reading Steven Shaviro's new book, Post-Cinematic Affect that has so far been an interesting exploration in contemporary moving image culture from the perspective of affect. Compared to a few years ago, there starts to be quite a range of literature on affect and media, and I'm starting to feel quite spoiled. I recently finished Kathleen Stewart's Ordinary Affects that I had earlier skimmed through and decided to really read. It's beautifully written, bit like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's A Dialogue on Love in its blending of...[read on]

Among the early praise for Carnal Resonance:

“Groundbreaking, provocative, insightful. If you want to understand the relationship between the internet and pornography, read this book.”
—Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

“Finally, a comprehensive book that deals originally, intelligently (and non-hysterically) with on-line pornography.”
—Linda Williams, Film and Media, University of California, Berkeley

“This is precise, original, and inventive work; scholarship of the highest order. Pornography is still a relatively neglected subject in online media studies, and even in ‘Porn Studies,’ few scholars focus in detail on pornography itself, rather than on its legal, political, or moral status. This book will be a very valuable and significant addition to the literature on pornography and on online media as a whole. It should appeal not only to scholars and students of pornography and Internet studies, but to those who engage with questions of representation and media more generally.”
—Feona Attwood, Professor of Sex, Communication, and Culture, Sheffield Hallam University, and author of Porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography

Learn more about Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography at the MIT Press website.

Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at University of Turku, Finland. Her scholarship includes Figures of Fantasy: Internet, Women, and Cyberdiscourse and the newly released Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography.

Writers Read: Susanna Paasonen.

--Marshal Zeringue