Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality

Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Ford School of Public Policy, and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality.

Her scholarship focuses on HIV/AIDS; urban poverty; social policy; and racial, class, and gender inequality illuminating social problems of great interest to scholars, communities, and policymakers. She works at the intersection of sociology, African American Studies, and public policy. Her work analyzes the impact of the HIV epidemic on women and the growth of the HIV safety net. Her award-winning recent book, Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality, uses the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a lens to understand how women achieve radical improvements in their social wellbeing in the face of social stigma and economic disadvantage.

Dr. Vincent Hutchings is a Hanes Walton Jr Collegiate Professor of Political Science and African Studies and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan.

His general interests include public opinion, elections, voting behavior, and African American politics. He recently published a book at Princeton University Press entitled Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn About Politics, that focuses on how, and under what circumstances, citizens monitor (and consequently influence) their elected representative's voting behavior. In addition to this project, Professor Hutchings also studies how the size of the African American constituency in congressional districts can influence legislative responsiveness to Black interests. The most recent product of this research was published in the Journal of Politics. Finally, he is also interested in the ways that campaign communications can "prime" various group identities and subsequently affect candidate evaluations. This study examines how campaign communications can subtly — and not so subtly — prime voter's racial (and other group-based) attitudes and subsequently affect their political decisions. Research from this project, co-authored with Professor Nicholas Valentino and Ismail White, has been published in the American Political Science Review. Professor Hutchings, and collaborators Ashley Jardina, Rob Mickey, and Hanes Walton, are currently exploring how different news frames can diminish or exacerbate tensions among Whites, Blacks and Latinos.

Dr. Daphne Watkins is a Professor of Social Work and Director of the Vivian A. and James L. Curtis School of Social Work Center for Health Equity Research and Training, and University Diversity & Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan.

She studies gender disparities and mental health over the adult life course using mixed methods research approaches. To date, her research has focused on understanding the social determinants of health that explain within group differences among black men; developing evidence-based strategies to improve the physical and mental health of black men; and increasing knowledge about the intersection of culture, ethnicity, age, and gender.

Prior to joining the School of Social Work, Professor Watkins completed a NIMH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Social Research and a NIH career development award in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, both at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Alford A. Young, Jr. is Edgar G. Epps Collegiate and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He also holds an appointment at that institution's Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS).

He completed his PhD in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1996. He also received his MA in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1992, and his BA in sociology, psychology, and African American studies (with honors) at Wesleyan University in 1988. His primary area of research has been on low-income African American men, where his emphasis has been on how they construct understandings of various aspects of social reality (i.e., notions of how social mobility, social inequality, and social structure unfolds in American society, of good jobs and work opportunity, of fatherhood and family living). Young has published The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances (Princeton University Press 2004) and various articles on the worldviews and ideologies of these men. He is completing a manuscript entitled, From the Edge of the Ghetto: African Americans and the World of Work and also working on a follow-up manuscript to The Minds of Marginalized Black Men that examines how African American men who were reared in poverty but who have engaged extreme upward mobility as young adults discuss learning to navigate of race and class-based constraints over the course of their lives. Finally, Young coordinates the Scholars Network on Masculinity and the Well-Being of African American Men, which is an assembly of mid-career scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and applied and professional fields designed to influence social policy and broader public understanding of the cultural dimensions of the condition of African American men.