Author

Carole S. Vance

United States · b. 1947

Carole S. Vance is an American anthropologist, feminist scholar, editor, and one of the leading figures in the development of sexuality studies. Her research has focused on the relationships between sexuality, gender, culture, human rights, and public policy, combining anthropological methods with feminist scholarship. Vance is best known as the editor of Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (1984), the landmark anthology that emerged from the Scholar and the Feminist IX Conference held at Barnard College in 1982. The volume became one of the defining publications of the sex-positive feminist movement and provided the original publication venue for Gayle Rubin's influential essay Thinking Sex. Throughout her academic career, Vance has examined the complex relationship between sexual pleasure, coercion, violence, and political regulation. Rather than treating sexuality solely as a question of oppression or liberation, she has argued that feminist scholarship must recognise both the possibilities of pleasure and the realities of danger without reducing one to the other. Her work has influenced feminist anthropology, sexuality studies, public health, and human rights research, particularly through her interdisciplinary approach to sexuality as both a cultural and political phenomenon. Within The Library of The Cellars, Carole S. Vance is preserved as one of the principal editors and intellectual organisers whose work helped establish the foundations of contemporary sexuality studies and sex-positive feminist scholarship.