On Monday, 22 March, the Center for Social Solution's associate director Alford A. Young, Jr., participated on the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) panel Forgotten Bodies discussing the recent work of Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes. Her book, Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality, takes a sociological and intersectionalist approach to women in the San Francisco area living with HIV/AIDS. 

The conversation invited three colleagues of Dr. Watkins-Hayes to comment on what they took away from her work. Dr. Young was joined by Dr.. Daphne Watkins, a professor of social work, the director of the Vivian A. and James L. Curtis School of Social Work Center for Health Equity Research and Training, and a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, and Dr. Vincent Hutchings, a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and the Hanes Walton, Jr. Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies. 

"What I particularly like about the work is how [Celeste] brings a sociological framework for understanding how dignity is often lost but can be recovered for people who are experiencing challenges in their lives," commented Dr. Young. "What we come to understand quite fully in this work is that social structure and culture matter. They play contextual roles in shaping both the choices that the women [in the research] pursue, the options that are available to them, and how others external to their lives may regard and think about them. And it is there that we can think about dignity--not simply as a human trait, not simply as the property of an individual existence--but a phenomenon that is cultivated, preserved, or often challenged by the structure or the cultural context that shaped people's lives."

Watch the full discussion here.