Lynn Comella

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Professor, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Expertise: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Adult Entertainment Industry, Pornography, Popular Culture

Biography

Lynn Comella is a professor of gender and sexuality studies in the department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies. An expert on the adult entertainment industry, her research explores a number of broad sociological themes, including the relationship between gender, sexual politics, and consumer culture.

Her work on the history of the women’s market for sex toys and pornography has been published in the International Journal of Communication, Porn Studies, Feminist Media Studies, The Feminist Porn Book, Sex for Sale, and New Sociologies of Sex Work, among other venues. She has also published more than 50 articles about sex and culture in local and national media outlets, including Bitch magazine and Pacific Standard.

She is the author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure (Duke University Press, 2017) and co-editor of New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law (Praeger, 2015). Comella was the recipient of the 2015 Nevada Regents’ Rising Researcher Award in recognition of early-career accomplishments and is a frequent media commentator.

Education

  • Ph.D., Communication, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • M.A., Gender Studies and Feminist Theory, The New School for Social Research
  • B.A., Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University

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Lynn Comella In The News

Inc. Australia
These founders know their companies can make investors and social media platforms squirm. They’re finding ways to succeed, regardless. Anna Lee remembers walking into rooms full of male investors with a prototype of her startup’s smart vibrator in hand. It might as well have been a slithering snake.
The Boston Globe
Harvard's Schlesinger Library didn’t set out to be a repository of 1980s pornographic history. It all started with the death of the feminist pornographer Candida Royalle. In 2015, the library’s then-director, Jane Kamensky, spotted Royalle’s obituary in The New York Times, which described her work as “female-oriented, sensuously explicit cinema as opposed to formulaic hard-core pornographic films that she said degraded women for the pleasure of men.”
The Conversation
The filmmakers behind Love Lies Bleeding (director Rose Glass and her co-writer Weronika Tofilska) are, as Glass describes “obviously … both film nerds”.
The Guardian
As demand for responsive sexbots grows, some developers are trying to thread the needle between fully neutered and fully uncensored AI
All Lynn Comella In The News

Articles Featuring Lynn Comella

UNLV Newsmakers 2024: February
The Las Vegas strip as seen on Super Bowl weekend (Josh Hawkins/UNLV).
Campus News | March 1, 2024

A collection of news stories and highlights featuring UNLV students and faculty.

UNLV Newsmakers 2023: August
Students at Pida Plaza on the first day of classes (Josh Hawkins, UNLV).
Campus News | September 1, 2023

A roundup of prominent news stories highlighting university pride, research, and community collaboration.

UNLV Newsmakers 2022: September
Dancers with the U.N.L.V. Ewalu Club
Campus News | October 4, 2022

A collection of news stories highlighting research wins, expert insights, and academic achievement.

All Articles Featuring Lynn Comella