Mireille Miller-Young


Mireille Miller-Young is a feminist and an 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.
Miller-Young holds a PhD in American History from New York University.
She describes herself as an "academic pornographer", a term originally adopted by Sander Gilman.
Miller-Young is currently working on a documentary film on black women in the porn industry.

''A Taste for Brown Sugar''

Miller-Young's 2004 PhD dissertation examines the history of black women in pornography with ethnographic methods. Called A Taste for Brown Sugar: The History of Black Women in American Pornography, the dissertation was hailed as "pioneering"
and was published as a book in 2014.
Reviewers have described the book as "masterful"
and lauded its "rigorous scholarship".
It has been described as "a remarkable text that applies critical race studies, feminist studies, sexuality studies, and film studies to Black women in pornography" and as a "must read" that is "deftly building" on the work of feminist scholars such as Angela Davis, Saidiya Hartman, and Celine Parrenas Shimizu.
It won National Women's Studies Association and American Studies Association book awards in 2015.

Criminal case

Miller-Young became known to a wider audience in 2014 when she assaulted a pair of teenage anti-abortion activists on campus, stealing and later destroying one of their signs. In her interview with police, Miller-Young said she felt "triggered" by the sign and had a "moral right" to remove the material from sight.
Miller-Young was charged with grand theft, battery, and vandalism. She pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 108 hours of community service and three years of probation. She was also ordered to pay restitution and attend anger management classes.
The case attracted widespread attention and precipitated think pieces from all over the political spectrum.
The UCSB Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Michael Young, published a letter on the incident that was interpreted as a rebuke to both sides involved in the altercation.
More than 30 professors from universities across the nation signed a letter of support for Miller-Young, describing her as a "gentle, brilliant mentor" who was a "victim of the cultural legacy of slavery"; she "fell victim to the graphic nature of the anti-abortion display she pregnant".
A column in the Los Angeles Times called Miller-Young a "sucker" who had walked into an obvious trap.

Publications

Books and book chapters