PhD Candidate Toby Hickson, "Invisible Labors, Visible Panics: Sex Work, Moral Panic, and the (Un)representability of Gendered Labor in Mass Culture"

CHR Summer Doctoral Fellow Talk

Tuesday, September 30, 2025 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Horizon Hall 6325 and zoom

Toby Hickson (PhD Candidate, Cultural Studies) received a BA in Comparative Literature with a focus on 19th-century prose followed by an MA in English with a thesis centered on the unspeakability of class in Victorian discourses. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies department at GMU working on a dissertation about the connections between the obfuscation of gendered labor in mass culture and moral panic legislation across different media epochs.

Project: "Invisible Labors, Visible Panics: Sex Work, Moral Panic, and the (Un)representability of Gendered Labor in Mass Culture"

In my dissertation, I examine how different mass media forms—print media in the late-nineteenth century, televisual media in the mid to late twentieth century, and digital media in the twenty-first century—have systematically erased the material conditions and labor practices of sex workers. My project explores how representational absences intersect with anxieties about class, gender, and sexuality, and how these anxieties fuel moral panic legislation that regulates the spaces and mobility of working-class sexuality and labor. Given that legislative interventions targeting sex workers often restrict movement and access to public spaces, my research directly aligns with the 2025–2026 CHR theme of “Space, Territory, and Mobility.”