University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Faculty Member, Department of Sociology

Professor

About

Barb Brents is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  She is a co-author of The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland (Routledge Press, 2010).

Brents’ research and teaching interests include political sociology, gender and sexuality, urban sociology, and public sociology.  Brents is also a faculty affiliate in the Women’s Studies Department at UNLV.  She teaches undergraduate classes on Principles of Sociology (online on WebCampus), Sociology of Gender, Sex and Social Arrangements, and graduate level seminars in Political Sociology and the Sociology of Sexuality.

Brents’ research uses a political economy lens to study sex and gender in market culture. Her recent work uses the sex industry as a site to understand the intersections of culture and economics -- including the construction of “market morality” in political debates around sexuality; the relation between tourism, consumption and sexuality; the emotional and bodily labor of selling sex; and consuming sex. 

Brents is a founding member of  Globalization, Sexuality and the City,  an interdisciplinary project and network to encourage the production and dissemination of research on the intersections of sexuality, culture and economics across the globe. The project regularly brings together graduate students and faculty at UNLV whose research intersects with globalization and sexuality, including scholars in the Sociology Department, Women's Studies, History, Boyd School of Law and Hotel Administration. The project has brought renowned sex industry researchers to UNLV including Teela Sanders and Laura Agustìn.  In 2009 S. Charusheela in Women’s Studies and other scholars are collaborating on a project to discuss the ways sexual regulation is integrated into state politics, presenting at the 2009 Rethinking Marxism gala conference and the 2010 Cultural Studies Association Conference. Check out our blog at http://sexandstudy.wordpress.com.

Contact Information