Research Interest

Sex Work, Anti-capitalist Thought, Marxist Feminism, Labor Organizing

Biography

Heather Berg is a feminist studies scholar writing about labor, sexuality, and social struggle. Her first book, Porn Work, explores workers’ strategies for navigating—and subverting—precarity in the U.S. adult film industry. It won the Working Class Studies Association’s C.L.R. James best book award. She is the editor of South Atlantic Quarterly’s “Reading Sex Work” special issue. Her current book project, Lumpen Theory: Notes from the Sex Worker Left, thinks about sex workers at the vanguard of radical political thought. She comes to UCLA with a PhD in Feminist Studies from UC Santa Barbara and over 15 years experience in anti-work organizing.

Publications

• “Reading Sex Work: An Introduction,” South Atlantic Quarterly (2021) 120 (3): 485–491
• “Freedom, Not Benefits,” Boston Review
• ‘“If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous”: Sex Worker Community Defense,’ Radical History Review (2024) 2024 (148): 130–153
• “Free Sex,” South Atlantic Quarterly (2023) 122 (3): 505–523
• “Porn Work, Feminist Critique, and the Market for Authenticity,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 42, Number 3
• “Left of #MeToo,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2020), pp. 259-286

Awards

• Mellon/ ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• Claire Moses Award for Most Theoretically Innovative Article Published in Feminist Studies
• C.L.R. James Best Book for Academic or General Audience Award, Working-Class Studies Association

In the Media

• “Sex Worker Theorizing,” KPFA Against the Grain, June 11, 2024
• ‘“Are We All Porn Workers Now?”: Gigwork & Radical Flexibility with Heather Berg & Michelle Chihara,” The World’s Work, February 7, 2022
• “Against Everyone With Conner Habib 147: Heather Berg or on Porn Work,” Against Everyone with Conner Habib, April 7, 2021
• “OnlyFans reversed its policy, but sex workers are still wary,” Marketplace, September 2, 2021
• “How OnlyFans Became the Latest Casualty of the War on Porn,” The New York Times, August 24, 2021
• “OnlyFans Isn’t Just Porn ;),” The New York Times Magazine, May 18, 2021