Course Description
Development of the Swahili culture. Topics on religion, politics, literacy, language, clothing, food, and music as well as outside influences from Arab nations, Asia, Europe, and America on the indigenous Swahili culture will be explored. Attention will be given to African American political, religious, and other social issues.
Athena Title
The Swahili and the World II
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in CMLT 3020E, SWAH 3020E, AFST 3020E, ANTH 3020E
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This class is designed to introduce students to the meaning and relationship between culture, language ideology, gender, economy, religion, and politics through the eyes of the Swahili people. At the end of the course, students will be able to understand and explain historically engineered global influences on the Swahili culture, gender issues entrenched in the formation of the Swahili identity, the role of language in political, academic, cultural, and religious phenomenon. Students will especially learn the meaning and connection between Kwanzaa and political, religious, and other identity issues of African Americans as they relate to the Swahili people and the language.
Topical Outline
1. Who are the Swahili? 2. Language ideology 3. Colonial linguistic legacy to Africa 4. Africa’s linguistic legacy between expansion and nationalism 5. Language, race in the black experience: An African perspective 6. African languages in the African American experience 7. What does Kwanzaa have to do with Swahili? 8. Linguistic Euro centrism and African counter penetration 9. Language and the quest for liberation: The legacy of Franz Fanon 10. Language in a multicultural context: The African experience 11. Language planning and gender planning 12. Language policy and foundations of democracy: An African perspective 13. Language policy and the rule of law in Anglophone Africa 14. Dominant language in a plural society 15. A tale of two English - The imperial language in postcolonial Kenya and Uganda 16. Roots of Kiswahili: Colonialism and nationalism 17. The Secularization of an Afro-Islamic language: Church state and marketplace in the spread of Kiswahili 18. The linguistic balance sheet- Post-cold war, post- apartheid 19. The three Swahili women 20. Influential Swahili women: Wangari Maathai- Nobel peace prize winner
Syllabus