Professor Benjamin Talton is a Professor of African history. His research, writing, and teaching focus on politics and culture in modern Africa and the African Diaspora. Professor Talton has formerly been a Visiting Senior Lecturer and Scholar-in-Residence at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana.
Professor Talton’s publications include three books: The Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality (Palgrave, 2010) and Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing, with Dr. Quincy Mills—Vassar College—(Palgrave, 2011), and, most recently, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (UPenn Press, 2019). He is currently an editor of African Studies Review, an interdisciplinary, peer-review journal.
Professor Talton serves on the executive board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) and is a past president of the Ghana Studies Association.
Books:
In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics. UPenn Press, 2019.
—with Quincy Mills, eds. Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing. New York: Palgrave, 2011.
The Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality. Palgrave, 2010.
Articles, Book Chapters, and Journals:
"Kill the Rats and Stop the Plague: Race and Public Health in Post-Conquest Kumasi," Ghana Studies, Volume 20
“The Northern Factor in Ghana History,” Ghana Studies, Volume 18 (2016), pp. 193-195.
"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.
Essays:
“The Radical Roots of ‘the Squad’: How Mickey Leland and the Congressional Black Caucus Paved the Way for Today’s Progressive Politics” (The Washington Post, August 2019)
“African History On Its Own Terms” (Africasacountry, January 2019)
“The Mandelas at Harlem’s African Square” (Africasacountry, December 2018)
“Race Politics in Ghana” (Africasacountry, January, 2013)
“Obama Could Have Done More For Africa By Supporting Pro-Democracy Protests” (The Conversation, January 2017)
“Trumps’s Rise: African American Politicians Must Must Lead On African Affairs” (The Conversation, December 2016)
“African Resistance to Colonial Rule” (Africana Age, The Schomburg Center)
“The Challenge of Decolonization in Africa” (Africana Age, The Schomburg Center)
