DEPARTMENT OF BLACK STUDIES

Research Interests:

Pornography
Sex Work
Black Sexuality
Black Sexual Economies
Gay Porn History
Black Masculinity
Oral History
Visual and Erotic Archives
Harm Reduction
HIV/AIDS

About:

Mark Lockwood is a porn scholar, resource mobilizer, and pleasure-centered harm reductionist who will be finishing his PhD in American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park this upcoming fall. Broadly, he writes, teaches, and researches about race and pornography, black gay porn history, sexual cultures, harm reduction, and the sex industries. He is currently writing a book project tentatively titled Black Inches: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Erotic Resistance in the ‘Blatino Porn’ Era. This book is the first to provide a rich analysis on the history, biographies, cultural production, and sexual representations Black and Latino (“blatino”) pornographers in the “blatino porn” era. This project explores how blatino pornographers created pornographic content for themselves, by themselves at a moment in gay porn history when men of color were largely excluded from mainstream pornographic media industries. Using personal interviews, extensive archival research, historiography, and film analyses, he explores how blatino pornographers pursued entrepreneurial efforts to gain control over the means of production; worked within, against, and around a porn industry that commodified their sexualities; and challenged, and sometimes subverted, stereotypical depictions of their representations in the pornographic. He has two forthcoming scholarly articles in Porn Studies.

Mark is invested in bridging the gaps between academic and the public. As such, he has over a decade of experience working in harm reduction and the sex worker’s rights movement. He has worked across multi-sectoral agencies and has a wealth of expertise in strategic grantmaking, capacity building, technical assistance, and community-based research with efforts to mobilize the healthy, dignity, and freedom of people in the sex trade industry. Additionally, he was a community organizer with DECRIMNOWDC, a collective of Brown and Brown sex workers, organizers, and allies, where he helped develop and strategize around sex worker rights and harm reduction policy at the local level in Washington, D.C.

Mark is truly committed to mobilizing the health, dignity, and rights of people in the sex trades. He is actively involved with Red Umbrella Fund, the first & only global fund dedicated to supporting the rights of sex workers; and on the Research and Knowledge Committee for the Sex Workers Donor Collaborative, a network of funders that convene to increase funding to support sex workers’ rights. To learn more about his work, please visit his website at: www.marklockwoodjr.com