IIR Teaching Resources: Africa

Books

Children’s Africana Book Awards 2006, announced by African Studies Association and Africa Access

Best Book Young Children
Tamara Bower. How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt.Simon & Schuster / Atheneum Booksfor Young Readers, 2005.

Best Book for Older Readers
Meja Mwangi. The Mzungu Boy. Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 2005

Honor Books Older Readers
David C. Conrad. Empires of Medieval West Africa: Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. Facts on File, 2005

Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney (illus.).The Old African. Penguin Group (USA) Inc./ Dial Books, 2005

Liz Sonneborn. The Ancient Kushites. Scholastic / Franklin Watts, 2005

Web Resources

Teaching African Literature
Keguro Macharia, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Excerpt: "Teachers of African literature are often called on to do the impossible: to teach a narrow selection of works that somehow represent a vast continent full of diverse languages, multiple histories, and widely differing customs and traditions. What, for example, binds Liberia and Eritrea or for that matter Mauritania and Botswana? What link can be made between Chinua Achebe’s 1958 Things Fall Apart and J.M. Coetzee’s 1999 Disgrace?"

HIV/AIDS, Human Rights and Civil Society : “Realizing
Human Rights: Access to HIV/AIDS-related Medication and the Role of Civil Society in South Africa” (Audio & Video)
Zackie Achmat, Chairperson, Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa. Zackie Achmat lives with HIV/AIDS. He is an activist with roots in the anti-Apartheid struggle and is at the forefront of campaigns for the rights to health care and medicine. Among his numerous awards, he has received The Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, was voted one of 35 heroes of 2003 by Time Magazine, and he along with the TAC was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. This lecture was delivered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in March 2006 with the support of the Center for African Studies, the Center for Advanced Studies, and numerous other units.

Pan-Africanism Today: “21st-Century Color Lines and Other Lines: The Challenge of Pan-Africanism” (Audio & Video)
Bill Fletcher, then President and Chief Executive, TransAfrica Forum, Washington DC
As we enter the 21st century, the color line in the global Pan-African movement has certainly not disappeared, but has evolved. Other divisions among the oppressed have complicated notions of transformative strategy for the movement: national liberation struggles hit a strategic dead-end after defeating colonialism and wealth polarization on the planet has raised the issue of class like never before. Race is constantly reconstructed; it is never a permanent category. This lecture was delivered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in February 2006; it was the Eighth W.E.B. DuBois Lecture organized by the African American Studies and Research Program, the Center for African Studies with the support of the Center for Advanced Studies, and numerous other units.

Africa Access
Helps schools, public libraries, and parents improve the quality of their children’s collections on Africa. Africa Access Review—over 1000 annotations and reviews of books for children. The Children’s Africana Book Awards— established to encourage the publication and use of accurate, balanced children’s books on Africa. Africana Book Buddies Club—providing certificates for young readers.

Eternal Egypt
A rich site!! Start your visit with the “guided tour.” Eternal Egypt illustrating “thousand years of Egyptian civilization. …[it] is a living record of a land rich in art and history, people and places, myths and religions.”

Maps of Africa
Over 570 maps of Africa that date from 1486 to 1922—which help to chronicle European and African encounters! To access and use, turn off your popupblocker and install Insight’s browsing software, available at the site. These antiquarian maps of Africa are from the collections of the late Dr. Oscar I. Norwich and the Stanford University Libraries.

Southern Africa Freedom Struggles 1950-1994
If you teach about Southern Africa, visit this site! The primary sources provide news reports, images and commentary that will enhance understanding. Teachers and students should be aware these materials represent many different perspectives. “Forty-four periodical titles have been selected from a very comprehensive list, with a view to presenting not only a wide spectrum of political views published during these years, but also a diversity of subjects such as trade unions, religion, health, culture, and gender. Publications reflecting both black and white viewpoints are included, and an attempt has been made to represent distinctive regional variations.”

 

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