2021/2022

Sanyu A. Mojola, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Director of the Office of Population Research

Princeton University

Born in Nairobi
Studied Psychology and Sociology at the University of Durham and Sociology at the University of Chicago

Project

Race, Health, and Inequality: Producing an Epidemic in the Shadow of the Capitol

This book project uses the case of Washington, D.C. to examine the socio-historical production of racial health disparities in the United States. The capital city has had some of the worst epidemic rates in the nation over the last 120 years, including infant mortality, drug addiction, homicide, and HIV. In each case, African-Americans have been disproportionately affected. I focus primarily on the HIV epidemic and draw on a combination of life-history interviews and secondary data including survey trends and archival material. I situate the lives and HIV outcomes of my respondents within the larger historical, political, and social context of the city, examining historical disease epidemics and racial, spatial, and class segregation (Ch. 2); gendered sexual dynamics, networks, and politics (Ch. 3); overlapping drug epidemics (Ch. 4); mass incarceration (Ch. 5); living and aging with HIV (Ch. 6); and finally, the city's public health interventions and national politics (Ch. 7). In the epilogue, I consider the implications for the city's COVID-19 epidemic.

Recommended Reading

Mojola, Sanyu A. "Fishing in Dangerous Waters: Ecology, Gender, and Economy in HIV Risk." Social Science and Medicine 72, no. 2 (2011): 149-156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.11.006.
-. Love, Money, and HIV: Becoming a Modern African Woman in the Age of AIDS. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014.
-. Mojola, Sanyu A., Nicole Angotti, Danielle Denardo, Enid Schatz, and F. Xavier Gómez Olivé. "The End of AIDS? HIV and the New Landscape of Illness in Rural South Africa." Global Public Health (2020). https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2020.1851743.