Benjamin Talton

Benjamin Talton

  • College of Liberal Arts

    History

    Professor

    Affiliated Faculty

    Programs
    • Global Studies
Office Location

Gladfelter Hall, 923

Expertise

Africa, African Diaspora

Biography

Benjamin Talton is Professor of History in the Department of History and an affiliate of the Global Studies Program. He earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago and BA at Howard University. His research, writing, and teaching focus on politics and culture in modern Africa and the African Diaspora. Prior to joining Temple’s faculty, he was a Visiting Senior Lecturer and Scholar-in-Residence at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana and an Assistant Professor of History at Hofstra University.

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 (Palgrave, 2011), with Dr. Quincy Mills University of Maryland, College Park, and, most recently, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (Penn Press, 2019), which won the 2020 Wesley-Logan Prize and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pauli Murray Prize.

Professor Talton is currently an associate editor of African Studies Review, the leading African Studies journal in the U.S. He also serves on the executive board for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) and is a past president of the Ghana Studies Association.

Website | Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

Books

  • In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (Penn Press, 2019)
    - 2020 Winner of the Wesley-Logan Book Prize for African Diaspora History by the American Historical Association
    - 2020 Finalist for the Pauli Murray Book Prize of the African American Intellectual History Society

  • —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

  • “An African Revolution Takes Shape,” Current History, 120, Issue 826 (May 2021), 196-199

  • “AHR: Conversation: Black Internationalism,” with Carlos Fernandes, Kira Thurman, Monique Bedasse, Dennis Laumann and Tejasvi Nagaraja, American Historical Review, 125, 5 (December 2020)

  • “The Climate Crisis: The Challenge for a New African Consensus,” The African Studies Review, 63, Issue 1 (March 2020), pp. 1-8 

  • “Kill Rats and Stop Plague’: Race and Public Health in Post-Conquest Kumasi,” Ghana Studies22 (2019), pp. 95-113

  • “The Northern Factor in Ghana History,” Ghana Studies, 18 (2016), pp. 193-195

  • “Ghana,” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Nationalism (30 December 2015)

  • Special Issue Editor, with Wilhelmina Donkoh, Ghana Studies, 17 (2014)

  • “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, 43, Number 1 (January 2012)

  • Editor, Afro-Optimism and Afro-Pessimism: 50 Years since “The Year of Africa,” Special Issue of the Journal of Black Studies, 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, 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 Politics of Identity in Local African Societies.” A Review Essay. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 40, Number 4 (2005), pp. 303-308

  • “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

  • “Thomas Sankara Gave His Life Fighting Neocolonialism,” Jacobin, April 2021

  • “Thomas Sankara Is Not Dead,” Jacobin, February 2021

  • “Black Americans Have Long Led the Global Battle Against White Supremacy,” The Washington Post, February 9, 2021

  • “The Tragic Delusions of White Exceptionalism,” Africa Is A Country, January 18, 2021

  • “Why Nkrumah’s Socialist, Pan-Africanist Vision Continues to Inspire Radicals Today, An Interview with Benjamin Talton and Anakwa Dwamena,” Jacobin, September 2020

  • “Reading List: Benjamin Talton,” Africa is a Country (February 2020)

  • “Mickey Leland and African in American Politics: An Interview with Benjamin Talton,” Black Perspectives, By Keisha Blain (September 2019)

  • “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 28, 2019

  • “African History on Its Own Terms,” Africa is a Country (February 2019)

  • “The Mandela’s at Harlem’s Africa Square,” Africa is a Country (December 2018)

  • “Africa on its Own Terms,” Africa is a Country(January 2019)

  • “Obama Could Have Done More for Africa by Supporting Pro-Democracy Protests,” The Conversation (January 2017)

  • “Trump’s Rise: African Americans Must Lead on Africa’s Affairs,” The Conversation (December 2016)

  • “African Resistance to Colonial Rule,” Africana Age: African and African Diasporan Transformation in the 20th Century. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Fall 2010)

  • “The Challenge of Decolonization in Africa,” Africana Age: African and African Diasporan Transformation in the 20th Century. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Fall 2010)

Courses Taught

  • Precolonial Africa
  • Cold War Africa
  • Africa Diaspora
  • Introduction to Africa
  • Colonization and Decolonization
  • Writing Seminar
  • Confronting Empire