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Elementary Swahili Fall 2022
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A Relativist View of the Indian Nation
Presented by: Professor Partha Chatterjee
Yvonne Owuor on Abdulrazak Gurnah and Lit. of the Swahili Seas
Episode 1: Meg Arenberg is joined by Kenyan novelist Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor to celebrate the momentous occasion of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel Prize, in her words, "a family win." Owuor talks about Gurnah the man and the mentor, the textures of his writing and how it has influenced her own, and reflects on the cartographic imagination that nourishes both poetry and prose born from the Swahili seas.
The conversation between Owuor and Arenberg is followed by a short reading from By the Sea (2001), one of Gurnah's most poignant depictions of the migrant experience and the rippling effects of colonial violence in the lives of ordinary people. In a few deft strokes, the passage orients us to the layered histories of Zanzibar's encounters with the world in both their raucous beauty and their brutality.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor was born in Nairobi, Kenya. She studied English and History at the Kenyatta University, earned a Master of Arts degree at the University of Reading, UK, and an MPhil (Creative Writing) from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. From 2003 to 2005, she was the executive director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival under the remit of which a literary forum was established. Her short story, The Weight of Whispers, earned her the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003. She is the author of two novels, Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019). Meg Arenberg is a writer, translator and scholar. She is a postdoctoral fellow in AMESALL at Rutgers University and Managing Director of the Radical Books Collective.
Louise Duus Book Scholarship for American Studies Minors
The Department of American Studies announces scholarships of up to $300 for declared American Studies or Race and Ethnic Studies (CCRES) minors majoring in Africana Studies, AMESALL, Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies (LHCS) or Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) to be awarded in Fall and Spring 2014-15 AY.
The scholarship recognizes declared American Studies or CCRES minors who have demonstrated scholarly promise and commitment to the interdisciplinary study of culture and global diversity.
Read more: Louise Duus Book Scholarship for American Studies Minors
Foreign Language and Literature Degrees Pay the Most
Lauren Weber for the Wall Street Journal | May 15, 2014
Parents, don’t despair. Even if your child spends four years of college reading Hungarian poetry or delving deep into the Faulkner oeuvre, he or she can still earn a decent salary shortly after packing up the senior-year dorm room.
So says the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which reports that the top-paying liberal arts majors for 2014 graduates are foreign languages and literature (average starting salary $46,900) and English ($42,200). The results are based on job offers that students accepted earlier this year and were reported by employers in February 2014 primarily through a variety of government surveys.
Read more: Foreign Language and Literature Degrees Pay the Most