Past and current courses in African Studies and related fields at the graduate level.
FALL 2023
LANGUAGES
CourseShare Language offerings. As of Autumn 2015, the University of Chicago is strengthing its language offerings by being an active member of the CourseShare initiative. Course offerings include Zulu, Wolof, Yoruba, Bamana, Mandinka, and Malagasy.
SWAH25200/SWAH35200: Swahili I | Fidele Mpiranya
Swahili is the most popular language of Sub-Saharan Africa, spoken in most countries of Eastern and Central Africa by more than 50 million people. Swahili is characterized by the typical complex Bantu structure. However, it is particularly easy to pronounce and fast learned. The Elementary Swahili series is designed to help students acquire communicative competence in Swahili and a basic understanding of its structures. The course presents basic phonological, grammatical, and syntactic patterns of Kiswahili. Through a variety of exercises, students develop communicative functionality in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Emphasis is put on dialogues and role-plays, individual and group presentations, and the use of audiovisual and web-based resources. Swahili culture and African culture in general are an important component of the course. At the end of the elementary course series, the students are able to communicate efficiently in everyday life situations, write and present short descriptive notes about elementary pieces of verbal creation (documentaries and video series in Swahili). This course allows fulfilling the non-Indo-European language requirement.
SWAH26800/SWAH36800: Intermediate Swahili I | Fidele Mpiranya
Students focus on broadening their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in this course.
Arabic, including Elementary, Intermediate, High Indermediate Modern, High Intermediate Classical, Advanced, and regional colloquial. This sequence concentrates on the acquisition and mastery of speaking, reading, and aural skills in a variety of types of Arabic.