Patricia A. Banks and Michael P. Jeffries

This week, our guests are Patricia A. Banks and Michael P. Jeffries. Patricia A. Banks is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a faculty member in the Program in Africana Studies and the Program in Entrepreneurship, Organizations, and Society at Mount Holyoke College. Her research program lies at the intersection of culture, patronage, and markets. Banks will be at Stanford University as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) in 2018-2019. With a focus on the African Diaspora, she studies the determinants, consequences, and meanings of cultural patronage and the processes underlying the emergence and growth of cultural markets. Her most recent book (Routledge Press) is Represent: Art and Identity Among the Black Upper-Middle Class. [caption id="attachment_952" align="alignright" width="200"] Jeffries[/caption] Michael P. Jeffries is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College, where he teaches courses on American popular culture and the politics of race, class, and gender. He is the author of Paint The White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Stanford University Press, 2013) and Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop (University of Chicago Press, 2011). He has published over 30 essays and works of criticism in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Boston Globe, and is a regular contributor on both television and radio at Boston's public broadcasting station, WGBH. His most recent book is, Behind the Laughs: Community and Inequality in Comedy (Stanford University Press, 2017). Join us as we discuss their work and put a B-Side spin on the most recent White House Correspondents Dinner; the new lynching memorial in Alabama; and the Obama portraits. And, don't miss our B-Side of the week – Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” along with her A-side track, “Substitute.”