Nina Banks

Nina Banks is associate professor of economics and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Women's & Gender Studies and in Critical Black Studies, a program that she co-developed with Carmen Gillespie.  Her publications focus on social reproduction and migrant households, Black women and work, and the economics of the first Black economist in the U.S. — Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander.  Professor Banks teaches courses on U.S. women's economic history, gender and migration, and poverty in the U.S., and she is the inaugural director of the Bucknell-in-Ghana study abroad program.

Dr. Banks is a faculty mentor for the Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics (DITE) program. She serves on the Board of Directors of the  National Economic Association (NEA) and the editorial boards of Feminist Economics and The Review of Black Political Economy. She organized the first joint annual Freedom and Justice conference of the National Economic Association (NEA) and the American Society for Hispanic Economists (ASHE).  She received her doctorate in economics from the University of MassachusettsAmherst.

Professor Banks is currently working on several book projects including a biography and an edited volume of the speeches and writings of Sadie Alexander (Yale University Press), a manuscript titled, Gender, Race, and Environmental Activism: Women of Color Working for Tomorrow (University of Toronto Press), and a coauthored book (with Cecilia Conrad and Rhonda Sharpe) on Black Women in the U.S. Economy: the Hardest Working Woman (Routledge).

Educational Background

• Ph.D. University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Research Interests

• political economy
• political economy of gender and race
• economics of family migration

Courses

• ECON/WMST 224: African Women & Social Action
• ECON/WMST236: Gender, Race, and Poverty
• ECON/WMST 253: Gender and Migration
• ECON 258: Intermediate Political Economy
• ECON 319/WMST 318: Economic History of Women in the U.S.

Recent Activities

Professor Banks is working in partnership with people in the community of Larabanga Ghana to promote sustainable income-generating activities and community reinvestment.

Selected Publications

MEDIA AND INVITED TALKS

Economic Status of Black Women and Other Women of Color, PREE 10th Anniversary Symposium, Economic Policy Institute.

Black Women and the Economy, U.S. Congressional Briefing co-hosted by Economic Policy Institute, Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Representative Keith Ellison.

Intersection of Family and Labor Markets, The Economics of Misogyny, Center for American Progress

The Life and Speeches of Sadie Alexander, Financial Times Allphaville Podcast

Sadie Alexander, Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)

"Alliances between the Black and White Working Class Can Strengthen the Economy," Jobs for Justice

Black Lives, Sadie Alexander, and Liberatory Knowledge, Department of Economics, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

BOOK CHAPTERS

"Family Migration in the U.S." Deborah M. Figart and Tonia Warnecke, eds. Handbook of Research on Gender and Economic Life. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, November 2013.

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

"The Black Worker, Economic Justice, and the Speeches of Sadie T.M. Alexander," Review of Social Economy. LXVI (2) June 2008: 139-161.

"Uplifting the Race through Domesticity: Capitalism, African American Migration, and the Household Economy," Feminist Economics. 12(4), October 2006: 599-624.

"Black Women and Racial Advancement: The Economics of Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander." 2005. Review of Black Political Economy. Vol. 33, no. 1, summer 2005: 89-24. (Issued June 2006).