An Interview with Dr. Alicia Bonaparte

Written by Sanya Dhama, Young Professionals Intern, UN Women USA LA

Dr. Alicia D. Bonaparte is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College and is President-elect of Pacific Sociological Association. She trained as a medical sociologist with a specialization in reproductive health, health disparities, and female crime and deviance at Vanderbilt University. She is also a proud graduate of Spelman College and earned her B.A. in Sociology (cum laude). Her publications and research interests examine the gendered social hierarchy within American medicine as well as the intersection of race and gender in healthcare practices and racial disparities. She is also co-editor of the anthology Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth (1st and 2nd edition), contributed to Routledge’s Motherhood Companion (2019) examining the collusion of race, class, and gender regarding choices about midwife-attended births, and has a chapter in Routledge’s Black Feminist Sociology (2021) that bridges African feminism and Black feminism to support Black maternal health throughout the Diaspora. She is currently working on her book manuscript Labors of Birthing work (Univ of South Carolina Press). Lastly, she has served as a keynote speaker for various organizations and institutions such as Doula Trainings International (DTI), UCLA’s Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPPTS), USC and Children’s Hospital HIV and PrEP interventionists, and LaGrange College.

If you would like to know more about Alicia Bonaparte, please watch the video: https://youtu.be/LWqBqHpMpn4

In this video you will find answers to the following questions:

• Why do you do what you do?
• What impacts have you seen your teaching have on how students interact with their social environments and how they engage within their future occupational fields?
• How can taking a liberal arts approach to analyzing medical systems be beneficial?
• Can you explain how gender falls within your social stratification pyramid?
• How do we talk about systems of oppression and social determinants of health?
• What issues lay at the intersection of race, gender, and/or class within healthcare practice and disparities?
• How can we improve dialogue surrounding gender in medical and social communities?
• How does current dialogue negatively affect both women and men?
• How can we better push for reproductive and maternal health in a highly polarized political climate surrounding such issues?
• What role do women play in understanding the overall health of communities?
• What inspires you to explore and spread knowledge of today’s health disparities?