Makeiva Jenkins

Makeiva Jenkins, M.AT., MA, is a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Georgia, where she also earned her MA in Sociology and her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies. She also earned her MA in African American Studies from Georgia State University in 2017. Her research interests include race, gender, class, inequality, punishment, culture, media, and social psychology. She has taught several courses at the University of Georgia, including African American Society (SOCI (AFAM) 2020) and Race and Ethnicity (SOCI (AFAM) 2820). 

Makeiva is interested in examining how race, culture, law, and economics impact the lived experiences of single black stay-at-home moms (SAHMs). Her dissertation investigates how they successfully navigate these roles and how race, culture, gender, and inequality combine to influence and impact their experiences and decisions. Through qualitative interviews, she studies how these women challenge racialized and sexualized stereotypes by creating counternarratives. She has received funding to support this research from the University of Georgia's Women and Girls in Georgia Conference (WAGG) Grant and their Summer Doctoral Research Assistantship.

 Additionally, Makeiva's research has investigated the relationship between help-seeking behaviors and the ideal of the strong woman. In a first-authored paper, currently under a Revise and Resubmit at Dubois Review, we find using Du Bois' double consciousness that Black women worried about confirming negative stereotypes, that help-seeking would reflect negatively on their broader community, and that they allowed themselves to endure more mentally and emotionally before seeking help versus their White counterparts. However, both groups experienced a consciousness due to their marginalization relative to men. 

From 2021-2023, Makeiva served on several DEI committees and as Assistant Diversity Chair and Diversity Chair in the Sociology Graduate Student Society. Additionally, from 2020-2022, Makeiva served as a research assistant on an NSF-funded project that focused on developing strategies to combat harassment and discrimination in colleges of engineering.