Professor Benjamin Talton is an associate professor of African history and Director of Undergraduate Studies. He specializes in modern Africa and the African Diaspora. He has published on local politics in Ghana, Ethiopia, and the African diaspora, including two books: The Politics of Social Change in Ghana (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010) and Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas, with Dr. Quincy Mills—Vassar College—(Palgrave MacMillan, August 2011). In 2005-2006, he served as a visiting senior lecturer and scholar-in-residence at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. Professor Talton is the current president of the Ghana Studies Association.
Books:
—with Quincy Mills, eds. Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2011.
Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2010.
Articles, Book Chapters, and Journals:
“‘Land to the Tiller’: Hunger and the End of Monarchy in Ethiopia,” Food in Zones of Conflict: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, Helen Macbeth and Paul Collinson, eds., New York: Berghahn Books (September 2014).
“1960s Africa in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Black Studies, Volume 43, Number 1 (January 2012) .
“Quenching the Thirst for Data: Beer, Local Connections, and Fieldwork in Ghana.” In Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2011, pp. 129-147.
“Representing the Past: Popular Historical Memory and the Transformation of Power in Colonial West Africa,” Africa and the West, Volume 6 (Fall 2011).
“‘All the Women Must Be Clothed’: The Anti-Nudity Campaign of Northern Ghana.” In The Black Body: Imagining, Writing and (Re)Reading, Sandra Jackson, Fassil Demissie, Michele Goodwin, eds. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2009, pp. 81-97.
“The Past and Present in Ghana’s Ethnic Conflicts: British Colonial Policy and Konkomba Agency, 1930-1951,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 38, Numbers 2-3 (2004), pp. 192-210.
“‘Food to Eat and Pito to Drink’: Education, Local Politics and Self-Help Initiatives in Northern Ghana, 1945-1972,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, Number 7 (2004), pp. 205-229.
