Celeste Watkins-HayEs
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Assistant Professor Areas of Interest:
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Celeste Watkins-Hayes is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology & African American Studies at Northwestern University. In addition to her faculty appointment, Watkins-Hayes is a Faculty Fellow at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research and Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health. Her areas of research specialization are urban poverty; social policy; HIV/AIDS; formal organizations (non-profit and government); and race, class, and gender. She has published articles in Social Problems, the Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy, and The State of Black America, 2001 and has been profiled in Essence and USA Today Weekend magazines. With Mario Small, Watkins-Hayes is the organizer of the website Urban Orgs: New Thinking on Organizations, Inequality, and Urban Conditions. Watkins-Hayes received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University in June 2003. She also holds an M.A. in Sociology from Harvard and a B.A. from Spelman College, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1996.
Current Projects
The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform. This is an ethnographic analysis of the implementation of welfare reform on the front lines of service delivery. It investigates how the professional, racial, class, and community identities of welfare caseworkers and supervisors shape the implementation of policy and other organizational dynamics. Study findings indicate that while welfare reform changed the job descriptions of front-line staff members (from eligibility-compliance claims processors to welfare-to-work caseworkers), these agencies were largely unable to undertake the steps necessary to change employees' professional identities. As a result, welfare reform did not unfold as many policy makers had imagined it, and a piecemeal system of service-delivery is now underway. While we have witnessed caseload reductions and increased work among low-income mothers, inequalities abound in how clients receive the services most likely to influence their abilities to sustain economic self-sufficiency. This incomplete revolution has also solidified many of the long-standing tensions around race, class, and community belonging in these offices in ways that have direct and indirect effects on service-delivery and other organizational dynamics. The book, The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform, will be released in the spring of 2009 by the University of Chicago Press. In order to complete this project, Dr. Watkins-Hayes received support from The National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0512018), The Brookings Institution, and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.
The Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS for African-American Women: An Ethnographic Study.
This ethnographic study explores the social experiences and processes of Chicago-area African-American women infected with HIV/AIDS. By exploring a range of domains in the women's lives, the study seeks to specify some of the ways in which HIV/AIDS impacts their daily living, life chances, and social outcomes. Areas of focus include women’s labor force participation, social network formation and maintenance, intimate relationship dynamics, and child rearing practices following an HIV diagnosis. The ultimate goal of the study is to highlight some of the social consequences of HIV/AIDS for this population by exploring the short- and long-term effects of the disease on the economic and social well-being of the women and their families. This project has received support from the National Institutes of Health (through the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California – San Francisco) and the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0512018).
Contact 
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1812 Chicago Av Room 302
Evanston, Illinois 60208-1330
Phone: (847) 467-7768
Fax: (847) 491-9907
(African American Studies)
1860 Campus Drive, (Office: Crowe 5-113)
Evanston, Illinois 60208-1330
Phone: (847) 491-4805
Office Hours: By Appointment in Crowe 5-113
Relevant Links Top
Urban Orgs: New Thinking on Organizations, Inequality, and Urban Conditions
Courses Top
| Current Courses: Fall Quarter 2008 | |
AFAM 101-6 Race, Poverty and Public Policy in America |
Syllabus |
| Courses Taught | |
| Soc 201-0 Sec.20 Social Inequality | |
| Soc 476 Sec 23: Special Topics: Race, Class, and Gender |
Publications Top
Books
Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Expected spring 2009.
Articles and Book chapters
Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. 2009. “Race-ing the Bootstrap Climb: Black and Latino Bureaucrats in Post-Reform Welfare Offices.” Social Problems 56 (2): 285-310 .
Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. 2008. “The Social and Economic Context of Black Women Living with HIV/AIDS in the US: Implications for Research.” In Sex, Power, and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond. Rhoda Reddock, Sandra Reid, Dianne Douglas, and Dorothy Roberts (Editors). Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers.
Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. “Human Services as ‘Race Work’? Historical Lessons and Contemporary Challenges of Black Providers.” In Human Services as Complex Organizations, 2nd edition. Yeheskel Hasenfeld (Editor). Sage Publications. Expected 2009.
Domínguez, Silvia and Celeste Watkins. 2003. “Creating Networks for Survival and Mobility: Social Capital Among African-American and Latin-American Low-Income Mothers.” Social Problems. 50(1): 111-135.
Watkins, Celeste. 2001. “A Tale of Two Classes: Socio-Economic Inequality Among African-Americans Under 35.” The State of Black America 2001. New York: National Urban League.
Watkins, Celeste. 2000. “When a Stumble is Not a Fall: Recovering from Employment Setbacks in the Welfare to Work Transition.” Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. 6(1): 63-84.
