Mireille Miller-Young

Areas of Study:

Pornography; Sex Work; Black Film, Popular Culture and Art; Feminist & Queer Theory; African American & African Diaspora Studies; Visual Archives; New Media; Ethnography; Oral History

Education:

PhD. New York University (American History and History of the African Dispora
M.A. New York University (American History and History of the African Dispora)
B.A. Emory University (History)

Dissertation: "A Taste for Brown Sugar: The History of Black Women in American Pornography."

Biography:

Mireille Miller-Young, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research explores race, gender and sexuality in visual culture and sex industries in the United States. Her manuscript, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work and Pornography (forthcoming from Duke University Press in 2014) examines African American women’s representation and labor in pornographic media. 

Earning her Ph.D. in History from New York University, Dr. Miller-Young has won several highly regarded grants and awards, including the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is Co-Convener of the Black Sexual Economies Working Group, sponsored by the Center for Work and Social Capital at Washington University School of Law, and Co-Founder and Co-Convener of New Sexualities, a research initiative sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UC Santa Barbara. 

Dr. Miller-Young has published research in Meridians: Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism and Sexualities, and in book collections such as Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture, Blackness and Sexualities, and C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader. She is an editor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (The Feminist Press, 2013), with Constance Penley, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, and Tristan Taormino. 

In addition, she has written essays for The New York Times, Feminist Theory, Colorlines, Re-Public.com, Cut-Up.com,and $pread, a sex worker magazine. Miller-Young is also working on a documentary film on black women in the porn industry, and a visual archive project called The Black Erotic Archive. Miller-Young has been interviewed for numerous books, articles, radio programs, and documentaries, including NPR’s “News and Notes” with Farai Chideya.