Speaker: Assistant Professor Kimberly Kay Hoang, University of Chicago

Come join Professor Hoang’s discussion about how physical intimacy has become a vital form of currency in the economic relations of Vietnam on its global stage. She will discuss her book “Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work” and examine the interconnections of high finance, charitable giving to sex workers, and the intimate spheres of the informal economy. To write her book, sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang worked as a bartender and hostess for five years in Ho Chi Minh City. The result is an ethnographic study of the stratified sex industry, taking an in-depth and often personal look at sex workers and their clients.