In 1989 at Addis Ababa airport an Ethiopian honor guard carries the casket of American Mickey Leland, a U.S. congressman from Texas, who died when a plane he was on crashed during a visit to Ethiopia. (AP)
Tadias Magazine
Events News
Published: Tuesday, April 14th, 2015
New York — Next week at Columbia University, a “Contemporary Africa Seminar” with historian Benjamin Talton looks at 1989 and the Era of Relief: Ethiopia and the US at the End of the Cold War
Benjamin Talton
Abstract: The international responses to food crises in Africa during the 1980s set the stage for post-Cold War era in which issues related to humanitarian intervention, development, and aid were the central features. As in Europe, 1989 was pivotal in Africa for dismantling the Cold War in symbolic and real ways as a viable framework for international affairs. Drawn from a chapter of my book-project, The End of Altruism: Africa, Aid and U.S. Politics in the 1980s, this paper reconstructs key events during of transformative year 1989 to demonstrate the significance of Western humanitarian relief in the Horn of Africa and Sudan and the Soviet Union’s retreat from African affairs for the advent of the humanitarian turn.
Bio: Professor Benjamin Talton is an associate professor of African history and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Temple University. 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
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If You Go:
Date: April 23, 2015 – 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: Columbia University Faculty House
www.columbia.edu
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