Sandra Elaine Greene

Overview

My research interests have ranged widely over the past forty (40) years, from the study of gender and ethnic relations in West Africa, to the role that religious beliefs, warfare,  and the experience of slavery have played in the lives of individuals and communities in eighteenth and nineteenth century Ghana. Most recently, I have focused on constructing the biographies of both ordinary and extraordinary women and men from southeastern Ghana. I do so to bring to life their hopes and joys, their fears and concerns, at a time when both slavery and the slave trade were still aspects of daily life, and when colonialism was also altering how these individuals, and so many others, understood the world in which they lived. An integral aspect of my research has involved  the exploration and expansion of the methodological tools that historians can use to uncover the histories of those time periods and areas of the world in which documentary sources are scarce.  I have applied historical linguistic methodologies to the historical study of cultural change, collected and interpreted oral traditions and oral histories, and employed literary close reading techniques and contextual analyses, as well as insights from anthropology and psychology to extract the most from the limited sources that are available on the history of West Africa. I find such a broad and inclusive approach both energizing and rewarding. 

Research Focus

• Africa, West Africa, Ghana,  History: social and cultural, gender and ethnicity, slavery, religious beliefs

Publications

Single Authored Books:

• Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision-making in the Age of Abolition. Indiana University Press. 2017.
• West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from 19th and early 20th Century Ghana.  Indiana University Press. 2011.   
• Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana.  Indiana University Press, 2002. Finalist for the 2003 Herskovits Prize (the best book on Africa published in the previous year in the fields of History, Political Science, Art History, Anthropology and Literature).
• Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast:  A    History of the Anlo-Ewe, Heinemann Books, Social History in Africa Series. 1996. Honorable Mention by the 1997 Herskovits Prize Committee American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) selected book for e-publication as a high quality text in the humanities that is of continuing importance for teaching and research.

Edited Volumes:

• African Slaves, African Masters:  Histories, Memories, Legacies. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein.  Africa World Press.2017
• African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, Volume 2:  Essays on Sources and Methods. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein.  Cambridge University Press. 2016.
• African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, Vol. 1. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein. Cambridge University Press. 2013.
• The Bitter Legacy:  African Slavery Past and Present. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein. Markus Wiener Press, 2013.
• New Encyclopedia of Africa, 5 volumes. Thomson-Gale.  Associate Editor with seven other associate editors under the editorial leadership of John Middleton and Joseph C. Miller. Winner of the Conover-Porter Prize, awarded for the most outstanding achievement in African bibliography and reference works published during the previous two years, by the Council of Africana Librarians, African Studies Association. 2008.

Selected Research Articles in Peer-Reviewed Publications since 2003:

• "Spirit possession, ritual self-cutting and debt bondage: an analysis of the testimony of a nineteenth century West African Priest," Slavery and Abolition, Published on line 23 March 2017: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2017.1298354
•  “(Child) Slavery in Africa as Social Death?”  Responses Past and Present,” in  After Slavery and Social Death. Edited by John Bodel and Walter Scheidel. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (Forthcoming) 
• “African Intellectual Ideas in the Age of Legal Slavery and the Slave Trade,” with Oluwatoyin B.  Oduntan. In Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin Klein (eds.) African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Cambridge University Press. 2016.
• “Christian Missionaries on Record: Documenting Slavery and the Slave Trade from the late Fifteenth to the early Twentieth Century,” in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein.  Cambridge University Press. 2016.
• “Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa,” Slavery and Abolition. (Available on-line 25 February) Hard- copy published in December issue. 2015.
• “Experiencing Fear and Despair:  The Enslaved and Human Sacrifice in 19th  Century southern Ghana,” in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. 2013.
• “Oral Traditions and Individuals Enslaved in Asante,” in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade. Cambridge University Press. 2013.
• Modern Trokosi (Child Slavery) and the 1807 Abolition in Ghana: Connecting the Past and Present, William and Mary Quarterly. LXVI, 4 (October). 2009.
• “Whispers and Silences: Explorations in African Oral History,” Africa Today, 50, 2, 41-54. 2003.

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